Breaking the myths. Introduction: https://hautdegamme.net/2026/08/05/pasta-and-the-myths-we-refuse-to-question/
The assumption runs through most food writing on pasta: big industrial producers are bad, small artisans are good, and quality only ever scales down.
Riccardo Felicetti runs Pastificio Felicetti, founded by his family in Trentino in 1908. The company makes two distinct ranges: a high-volume line sold in supermarkets across Europe, and Monograno, a premium line made from single, named heritage wheat varieties. I wrote to him with a set of direct questions.
You select your grain, you don’t grow it. How do you decide which durum wheat is good enough, and where it comes from?
“We were born pastai. We’ve made pasta since 1908, and we firmly believe in the professionalism of every part of the supply chain. We have many different quality requirements for durum wheat, and for other grains too, farro for instance, and for that we turn to farmers and millers who share the same goals we do. Grain quality depends on what the final customer needs: a home cook, a professional kitchen, a starred restaurant and an airline all have different requirements. Our grain comes from Italy, with the exception of Khorasan under the Kamut brand. We’ve supported that grain’s supply chain since 2000, because we believe in the project behind it.”
The Monograno line is built on single varieties. What does a single variety, with its own name, give you that a blend can’t?
“Monograno was born from the wish to give identity to the territories of grain and water, the two primary ingredients of pasta. A single durum wheat variety identifies a territory, and carries characteristics typical of that soil that a blend could never represent in the same unified way. Blends, obviously, allow for far more standardisation. That’s exactly why we use very high quality durum wheats, so we can appreciate the qualitative variation that happens year to year, and treat it as a natural variation rather than a defect.”
Where does quality actually lie, in the grain, the milling, or the drying?
“Quality sits in the analysis of every element that makes up pasta production: the choice of seed, checking the right place to sow it, correct agronomic practice, the choice of milling type, which has to be consistent with the machines that will knead the semolina in the pastificio, the strength of the dough, the extrusion, the drying. Every pastificio has its own rules, and the more it refines its production capability, the more those rules become a determining part of the company’s identity.”
Today in Italy, a pasta packet has to state the grain’s origin. Not in Britain. What does that blindness cost the people cooking there?
“I don’t believe a product’s origin can define its quality. The requirement to declare a raw material’s origin comes from a political and protectionist choice that has artificially shaped the grain market, and other food markets, in Italy, making the public believe that Italian-origin products are the best in the world. I think the blindness is more Italian than anything, and the cost is carried by the Italian consumer, through the higher prices that come from less competition.”
What’s the biggest misconception about dried pasta, held by people who believe fresh is always better?
“When I started working with starred restaurants, they generally didn’t use dried pasta, because the cooking times were too long. They preferred fresh: if they got a dish wrong, they could remake it in five minutes. With a spaghettone, it took fifteen. The products aren’t really comparable, because of their technical characteristics, texture and performance. I respect the choice, but I wouldn’t frame it as better or worse, rather as more or less suited to the restaurant’s structure, the quality of service, the type of dish. I don’t see fresh pasta with clams working well, just as tagliatelle with ragù alla bolognese will preferably always be made with fresh, undried pasta.
I had put to him the belief widely held outside Italy, that a restaurant making its own pasta is automatically doing something better. He answered:
“As for the position you raised: making pasta in-house shows real attention toward the customer, BUT that doesn’t mean he’s a good pastaio, or that the finished product is excellent. Through that choice, he’s making an identity decision, and in my opinion that can’t establish that fresh pasta is better in any absolute sense. It is, for him, for his kitchen’s needs and his identity. But the two products remain two very distinct worlds, difficult to compare.”
I followed up on the mould question directly, asking how anyone, professional or otherwise, can actually tell whether grain was good, rather than cheap, mouldy, or badly stored. He answered with the story behind his own sourcing, and then the part that mattered most.
“We started buying Italian grain almost thirty years ago. I wanted the pastificio to contribute, in its own small way, to raising the value of Italian grain, through the quality improvements, protein, gluten, colour, fewer pests, higher yield per hectare, that came from a bigger commitment to new agricultural techniques. The honest, coherent story of Italian cereal farming, set against the sheer scale of North America, mattered then and still matters now.
But it’s decidedly easier to work on the sense of danger, on doubts about health, on the exact levers that have raised questions about the safety of imported grain. I’ll let you in on a small secret, one every technician in the trade already knows: mouldy grain exists in Italy too. Mice and parasites eat Italian grain too. Mycotoxins develop on Italian grain too, if it’s stored badly and for too long.
How do we identify grain that isn’t good quality? Analysis of certain parameters gives perfect indicators: bacterial loads, mycotoxins, ochratoxins are, for example, values that mark raw material as unfit for human consumption. Mills, more than pasta makers, have their finger on the pulse, and constantly test not only their own storage but especially the batches arriving throughout the year. Even someone who owns their own grain fields still has to send it to an external mill, unless they’re an enormous pastificio, like Barilla, De Cecco, Divella and a few others, and it’s at that point that any quality damage reveals itself.”
I asked what a consumer should actually put their trust in, since none of this is published or visible on a shelf.
“What should the consumer trust? The competence, the responsibility, that the families of grain, semolina and pasta have guaranteed for centuries. The analyses aren’t published, that’s true, but they’re the reason certain lots get rejected, very few, in truth. We need to go back to trusting producers. Industry isn’t always ugly and bad.”
Several of the historic Italian pasta names still on supermarket shelves no longer belong solely to the families who built them. Garofalo is majority owned by Spain’s Ebro Foods. Buitoni belongs to Nestlé. Delverde sits under the Newlat group. Agnesi is part of Colussi. I asked him what a name is still worth once the family behind it has sold.
“The evolution of business leads to companies growing larger. Markets are becoming ever more interconnected, and it’s simply a fantasy to think that staying small is a guarantee of quality forever.
Trust should rest on the sum of values a brand carries with it. In the case of Garofalo, for example, Massimo Menna, his family, and his staff have stayed firmly in control, guaranteeing the quality of their products.
So: we should continue to trust, especially companies that grow and succeed. If there are doubts, just ask. Serious companies answer.”
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Garofalo is the case where the people stayed even after the sale; Rummo is still family-owned. His answer doesn’t cover a name kept alive purely as a marketing asset, sitting over a fund with no original family left inside it, and there is no way to tell the two apart from a supermarket shelf.
Across five questions and four separate replies, Felicetti never once suggested I should buy his pasta over a corporate rival’s. He defended growth. He said staying small guarantees nothing. He told me, unprompted, to keep trusting companies that grow and succeed.
The distinction that his own answers point to is narrower than the myth being taken apart here. Grain, sourced and improved over decades. Milling, checked by someone with no reason to let a bad batch through. Drying, extrusion, and the choice to treat natural variation as a feature rather than a flaw. None of it is a function of company size. All of it is a function of who, at every stage, chose to do the work properly.
Andreja Lajh is the founder of Haut de Gamme, a London-based PR agency working with chefs, restaurants and food producers worldwide. She writes about food, wine and the restaurant world at hautdegamme.net.
