round, and the pasta still comes through

The trofie are short, twisted, and arrive dressed in green: oil, chopped pistachio, and a pistachio pesto that binds them without drowning them. Nothing more than that.

The dressing is round. It doesn't shout pistachio the way things built for the photo do. It's savoury, creamy, full, but it stays a step back, it leaves room. The creaminess doesn't come from cream, it comes from the pistachio itself, from its fat, and it shows.

And the pasta makes itself felt too. It isn't one of those that vanish under the sauce, the kind that could be swapped for any other shape without anyone noticing. It holds, it has body, it has a taste of its own, and with every bite there isn't only the pistachio, there's the pasta underneath as well.

The pistachio is from Bronte, and it couldn't be otherwise, Bronte is right next door. But the point isn't the provenance. Bronte pistachio has become a kind of flag, they put it everywhere, on everything, often just to be able to say it's there. Not here. Here it's measured, it stays in its place, and the dish is better precisely because someone had the confidence not to overdo it. Letting the pasta still be felt, under the most talked-about product on the island, is a choice. And it reads as one.