There’s a line on the Ennios social feed that says it in six words: fresh pasta, handmade, in house. We thought it deserved slightly more than six words.
Making pasta in the building is one of those decisions that nobody notices when you do it and everybody would notice if you stopped. It’s slower, obviously. It means somebody’s rolling and cutting during the quiet part of the day, every day, for something that could arrive dried in a box for a fraction of the effort. But it’s the difference between pasta that carries a sauce and pasta that just sits under one, and in an Italian kitchen that’s more or less the whole argument.
It’s also, we’d argue, the same habit of mind that kept the AA Rosette on the wall this year. Inspectors judge what’s on the plate on the day. Fresh pasta is a daily bet that the plate will hold up.
If you’ve not been, Ennios sits on Town Quay in a red brick building that looks straight out over Southampton Water. Come hungry, order the pasta, and see if you can tell. We think you can.