Food Tours · Tour

Spaghetti Cut on a Guitar, and All Three Sauces Made by You

Three shapes and three sauces, all made from scratch, which is more than any other pasta class in this list attempts. Ten people at most, in a kitchen out on the Circonvallazione Gianicolense in Monteverde, away from the centre. The shapes teach three different things. Ravioli: rolling thin enough to see through, filling, and sealing without trapping air. Fettuccine: cutting ribbons by hand at an even width. And spaghetti alla chitarra, which is pressed through a frame strung with steel wires that gives the strands a square section instead of a round one, so sauce clings to them. The frame is called a guitar for the obvious reason, and it comes from Abruzzo rather than Rome. The three sauces are the Roman canon, and here you actually build them rather than have them handed over finished. That is where the class earns its price: emulsifying pecorino into pasta water without it turning to strings is the whole skill of cacio e pepe, and you cannot learn it by watching. Selected wine is poured throughout, with coffee and water. Two departures, eleven in the morning and five in the afternoon. Up to ten guests, taught in English or Italian by local chefs. A gluten-free version is available. There is a café next door if you arrive early, and a second entrance a few numbers down if you cannot find the first.