Restaurants
Vancouver's Best Pasta
By Chris Gonzalez published Apr 1, 2009
.jpg "La Buca’s toothsome agnolotti con sugo d’agnello—green pea and mint agnolotti with braised-lamb ragout")
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Satisfying to both belly and budget, pasta is a diner’s best friend. And nothing better exemplifies the regional differences in Italian cooking. Who makes the best in town? Let the search begin
When it comes to pasta,” says Andrey Durbach, “most people have it all wrong.” We’re sitting on one of the banquettes at Parkside, nursing sturdy glasses of Primitivo, a few weeks before this West End room will reopen as the new incarnation of La Buca, his bustling little pasta-forward room at 24th and MacDonald. Durbach has the countenance—and sometimes the mood—of a grizzly bear woken early from hibernation, but he’s an acute observer of Vancouver’s dining proclivities and knows that, in the current economic climate, value is key. La Buca has shown him that a congenial room featuring great pasta dishes at smart prices can thrive. I won’t soon forget La Buca’s house-made fettuccine boscaiola with brandy, pancetta, and wild mushrooms. But what’s this about people not getting it?
“North Americans treat pasta as a vehicle for consuming sauce. They think alfredo is the package and the fettuccine is merely the UPS truck. But great pasta is about the noodle.” He slaps the table. “The noodle is everything. You know where I learned that? Japan.”
Durbach, 41, accepted a position in a suburban Tokyo noodle bar in 1991 after graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, in New York. “The Japanese have a huge noodle culture,” he explains. “Sure, it’s not linguine—it’s ramen and udon and soba. But they’re just as passionate about it as the Italians. I lived there for a year, and I’d watch people in noodle bars gobble up ramen and leave the broth. It didn’t interest them. It was only there to keep the noodles warm. Every nation with a strong noodle culture gets it except North Americans: when your noodles are gone, so should the sauce be. Here, the best part is obscured by sauce. The focus is backward.
“Every type of pasta has its own identity, its own language. And if you pay attention, the noodle will tell you how to prepare it. It’s like writing music—if you understand the melody, the lyrics will write themselves. Pasta is the same.” He leaps up and comes back with two types of dry pasta.
“This is an artisanal linguine,” he says, “extruded smooth to allow oils to cling to it. This is for aglio olio. And this”—he points to a large cylindrical noodle—“is paccheri. When you cook it, it collapses on itself, like big floppy rigatoni. It needs a chunky tomato ragout with eggplant or Italian sausage to get inside the pasta to hold it up. But paccheri aglio olio? Never.”
