How much do you spend on pasta?

The price for a standard 500g packet of own-brand fusilli or spaghetti from a supermarket is 75p; brands such as De Cecco or Barilla might be £2.

Last month, however, a new player arrived in Britain charging £22 for a 280g packet of Tagliatelle, working out at close to £80 a kilo. This astonishing price is being charged by a brand called Atavi, launched by Spanish chef Albert Adrià.

Admittedly Adrià, along with his brother Ferran, ran El Bulli restaurant in Catalonia, frequently voted the best restaurant in the world, so this is Pasta with a serious provenance. 

Still, at 13p a strand, it is budget-busting even for the well-heeled — Tesco’s own Brand Tagliatelle Works out at 0.3p a strand.

What’s in it? Wheat and water. That’s it. Adria has produced three flavours: smoked, umami and sourdough. But why the huge price tag? While the price for a standard 500g packet of own-brand fusilli or spaghetti from a supermarket is 75p, premium pasta is on the rise Ilaria Pietrogrande, Atavi’s marketing director, explains: ‘We make the product in small batches and we pack our tagliatelle by hand: everything we do is curated to the smallest detail.’

While Atavi is the priciest, premium pasta is on the rise.

‘In the past ten years, people in the UK — partly thanks to social media — are far keener to understand what is in their food and where it has come from,’ says Nicholas Egan, the founder of Cornwall Pasta Co, explaining why customers are happy to pay up to £15 for a box of his.

To test them, we followed the cooking instructions on the packet and flavoured the cooked pasta with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper and a small amount of Parmesan — in order to test the pasta itself, rather than any sauce.

So which posh pastas are worth the punchy price tag? And which are Poundland pretending to be Prada?

TRY-HARD TAGLIATELLE

Atavi smoked tagliatelle, £22 (or £78.57 per kg), atavi.uk

‘That looks like rubber bands,’ says my wife suspiciously when she sees the strands of thick, brown tagliatelle emerge from the pan. It’s true it doesn’t look very appetising and the rough texture feels like it is trying too hard to be artisanal.

The smoky taste — ‘enhanced by imbuing roasted wheat with the fumes of wine canes’, according to the very fancy, triangular box — is good, however, and would pair well with a lemon and ricotta sauce or maybe a carbonara.

But is it worth the mortgage-busting price? No, it isn’t. 3/5 Atavi’s tagliatelle costs 13p a strand while Tesco’s own brand tagliatelle works out at 0.3p a strand (stock image)

PRETENTIOUS PENNE

Tirrena Penne Rigate, £12.99 (or £25.98 per kg), selfridges.com

The sturdy blue box, with embossed lettering and a swirly pattern is a beautiful bit of packaging to be fair, but it’s also possibly the most pretentious thing I have read all year: ‘The pasta is the result of a land favoured by the breezes of the Tyrrhenian Sea and cared for by the wisdom of the Frescobaldi family.’ Really? Seriously!

It’s some penne. And quite toothsome penne at that. I am struggling to discern what makes this superior to supermarket pasta. 2/5

POSH BUT PRICEY

Trivelli Tartufi Fettuccine With Summer Truffle, £14.95 (or £59.80 per kg), fortnumandmason.com

This is made by an Italian truffle specialist, so you would hope they could capture the savoury, earthy notes of summer truffle, especially at this price. The taste, however, is not so much ‘subtle’ as barely there.

This is a shame, because the fettuccine is rich with a heavy egg content. I discovered later that it makes an excellent carbonara. A good pasta, but not worth the price. 4/5

FAMOUSLY GOOD Classica Cipriani Tagliarelle with Spinach, £10 (or £40 per kg), sacla.co.uk

Harry’s Bar is possibly the most famous drinking establishment in the world. The Venice institution, opened by Giuseppe Cipriani in 1931 is notoriously expensive, so the price of this, as served at the bar in Venice, is not a surprise.

The spinach (two per cent of the content) is mostly for colour; you cannot taste it, but the tagliarelle (the name that Cipriani gives to tagliatelle) is very good, with that gorgeous texture that high quality egg pasta should have. 4/5

WHERE’S THE WOW?

La Cerqua Tartufi Chitarrine al tartufo, £9.99 (or £39.96 per kg), selfridges.com

A bit like spaghetti, chitarrine is thinner, and when it’s cut, has a square cross-section rather than round. After cooking, it looks a bit like scruffy noodles and lacks a wow factor.

Also, the truffle flavour is a whisper, rather than a satisfying punch. Still, the box with a watercolour sketch of a truffle hound hunting for treasure amid the trees is undeniably pretty and it’s a decent product. 3/5

Cornwall Pasta Co. Cornish Saffron Mafaldine, £15 (or £50 per kg), harveynichols.com

This is fascinating, managing to capture the very delicate but intriguing fragrance of saffron in the pasta itself. I loved it.

But it needs a very delicate sauce, maybe no more than some ricotta and black pepper, not to kill the flavour.

The mafaldine, a thick ribbon with curly edges, has wonderful texture. Worth the price tag. 5/5

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