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Object of the Week

The Hottest New Pasta Shape Was Born From a Podcast

Bucatini is so 2020

Rob Walker
Marker
Published in
4 min readMar 25, 2021

Enlarged view of a new type of pasta called “cascatelli.” The pasta has a U-shape with a ribbed outer edge.
Photo illustration: Save As/Medium; Source: Scott Gordon Bleicher/Dan Pashman

Object of the Week is a column exploring the objects a culture obsesses over and what that reveals about us.

The 21st century has been a time of constant technical innovation — and a time for ridiculously overthinking food. These seemingly unrelated meta-trends have now coalesced in cascatelli, a brand new and meticulously engineered pasta devised over a period of three years by the host of the popular food podcast, The Sporkful.

Naturally, it’s a hit. In the first week of its formal unveiling to the public, the novel noodle has been hyped everywhere from Today to Eater to NPR to the design blog Core77. You can order some here — a pack of four one-pound boxes goes for $17.99 — but thanks to boiling demand you’ll have to wait at least eight to 10 weeks.

Like many contemporary innovations, cascatelli was created as a result of dissatisfaction with something that was actually perfectly fine: in this case, all extant pasta. Dismissing spaghetti, for instance, Sporkful host and creator Dan Pashman informed one interviewer that: “It’s just a tube.” To fight back against this supposed problem, he envisioned a pasta influenced by his favorite pasta elements, notably the “ruffles” of mafalde noodles…

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Marker
Marker

Published in Marker

Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Rob Walker
Rob Walker

Written by Rob Walker

Author The Art of Noticing. Related newsletter at https://robwalker.substack.com

Responses (3)

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I heard about it NPR's Planet Money. Although I couldn't care less about pasta, the story behind cascatelli, the journey of one man barging into a food sector so entrenched and not giving up through all the ups and downs, is very inspiring. I admire…

10

I’ve tried ordering it to Switzerland, well I must say the shipping cost is almost 10x as much as the pasta, so I will admire it from afar🙂

6

Very similar to MY favorite pasta, Cock's Comb, or Cresta di Gallo. Looks like a knock off of that shape, which, IMHO is perfect in all the ways the chef described.