I’ll take the $98 pasta, please

Tucked away in East Vancouver, on a nondescript strip of Powell Street known for its small handful of cozy restaurants, Angela Pastificio literally stands out. Its bright orange awning, reminiscent of egg yolk, cheerfully marks the spot: This is a house of pasta worship.

Angela’s only menu option is an eight-course, $98 pasta tasting experience. If that sounds like a lot of money for noodles, that’s because it is. Pasta is a food with humble origins; in Italy, affordable access to high-quality, handmade noodles is less of a luxury and more of a national right.

But in Canada, our seemingly insatiable appetite for Italian food has been growing steadily since the aughts, and prices have risen to meet the demand. Scan the menus at higher-end Italian restaurants and you’ll find plates of noodles for up to $29; even chain restaurants are boldly selling pasta dishes for upward of $30. And now, a new crop of Italian restaurants are taking things to the next level with expensive pasta tasting menus.

Spending nearly $100 at Angela might be hard to swallow at first, but the tasting menu is a lot of food; diners certainly won’t leave hungry. And according to chef Calvin Vogstad, what really makes Angela’s price worth it is the heightened level of skill, labour and care put into every bite.

“‘Craft’ is the best word for it,” he says. “I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I’m still learning literally every day.”

Angela’s menu, which changes every month, features an antipasti, a salad, a progression of five pastas and a dessert. Each pasta is handmade, meaning the noodles are cut, shaped and filled without the use of an extruder (a machine with different attachments that pops out perfectly sized noodles, be it spaghetti or rigatoni).

“Every piece on your plate is different from the others because it’s all done by hand,” Vogstad says. The dough itself is not a perfect science, either: Humidity and airflow, for instance, can affect its consistency, which is why Vogstad has a small army of fans that he places in different areas of the restaurant depending on the weather. “I know that sounds ridiculous,” he says. “But it makes a serious difference.”

The result is noticeably better. Handmade noodles have snap, texture and depth of flavour that store-bought or even extruded pasta simply does not.

On top of that, Vogstad works hard to ensure that his menu is always offering something different. Don’t visit Angela expecting familiar options like fettuccine or fusilli; Vogstad’s pastas are intentionally obscure and regional. This past September, highlights included spoja lorda from the Emilia-Romagna region (delicate ridged squares filled with ricotta and Parmesan, and then finished with decadent black truffle butter) and tajarin al ragù from Piedmont (ultrathin egg-yolk noodles served with pork, veal and beef Bolognese-style sauce).

Hyperlocality and artisanship are also the key pillars of Toronto’s Pasta Privato, which opened earlier this year and is run by executive chef and owner Michael Angeloni. There, an eight-course, $150 tasting menu includes three handmade pastas from different regions in Italy. “The noodles that we’re doing are very unique,” Angeloni says. “Each one is hand-braided or hand-pulled.”

Angeloni estimates that it takes about 10 to 12 hours a day to make all of the pasta for his 28-seat restaurant. A more labour-intensive noodle like lorighittas – an elegant braided-ring shape – might take two or three hours for just 20 portions.

Back on the West Coast, most of the chefs cooking pasta tasting menus (including Vogstad) credit their skills to La Quercia, which has been serving handmade noodles in Vancouver’s Kitsilano area since 2008.

While La Quercia doesn’t have an official pasta-specific tasting menu, chef Adam Pegg will create one if guests ask for it. “I’m interested in everything, but the one thing that matters the most to me is the pasta,” he says. The tasting concept started around 2010, when a friend of Pegg’s requested La Quercia’s $100 family-style menu – but only wanted pasta dishes. It became something of a secret menu item (truly: If you know, you know) and inspired many young cooks who spent time in La Quercia’s kitchen. “I’m proud of all of them,” Pegg says. “I want everybody to succeed.”

One of those chefs was Greg Dilabio, who partnered with Pegg to open Oca Pastificio on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive in 2019. The restaurant specialized in a handmade pasta tasting menu that was wildly popular until Dilabio died suddenly in mid-2023, causing its abrupt closing. The restaurant reopened as Magari by Oca later that year (Pegg is no longer involved), and carries on the legacy left by Dilabio. A recent indulgence in Magari’s $80, seven-course tasting menu included such delights as pappardelle with housemade rabbit-sausage ragù, and the restaurant’s signature crown-like rotolo filled with smoked provolone and squash and then topped with sage butter.

Another one of La Quercia’s graduates is James Frost, who opened Victoria’s 16-seat Lumache with his wife Heather Dosman at the end of 2025. Lumache serves à la carte dishes, but its flagship offering is its $98 tasting menu, which includes a selection of antipasti and vegetable dishes, four handmade pastas and dessert. The menu changes monthly, but what always stays the same is Frost’s emphasis on the craft of pasta-making; dishes are simple and restrained, keeping the attention on the noodles.

“If you’re going to make pasta at a high level, you have to have the ability to stand behind it without putting anything on top,” he says. “In my house, we don’t mess around with loading up on garnishes.”

Frost thinks that pasta is an enduring favourite among Canadians because it’s deeply comforting. “My entire interest in Italian food can be traced back to eating pasta as a kid,” he says. For many of us, that childhood love of digging into a big, warming bowl of noodles never really goes away.

Does that mean we need to spend $100 to eat it? No, of course not. After all, we’re talking about very basic ingredients such as flour and eggs. But for a special night out, pasta tasting menus offer a more relaxed, yet equally enjoyable, alternative to the foams, emulsions and elaborate garnishes of haute cuisine.

“Pasta is a beloved food,” Frost asserts. When you serve it in a restaurant, he continues, “everyone’s already on your side.”