Pasta rolled this morning,
cooked the Italian way.

Seafood linguine. Hand-rolled linguine, prawns, mussels, clams, garlic, white wine, chilli, parsley. Finished with a slick of olive oil and a squeeze of lemon. It's the dish more guests order on second visits than anything else on the menu.

Prawn tagliatelle with cherry tomato. Lighter, sweeter, a good lunch dish.

Truffle ravioli. Hand-folded, filled with ricotta and spinach, finished with butter, parmesan and a shaving of black truffle. Worth the extra few lek.

Risotto ai gamberi (prawn risotto). Carnaroli rice, prawn stock, white wine, a final stir of butter and parmesan. The kind of risotto Italians grudgingly admit is good.

Dried pasta is fine. Fresh pasta is different. The texture is silkier, it holds sauce better, and it cooks in two or three minutes instead of ten — which means the kitchen can time it to the second to land on your table at the moment it's perfect.

We roll most of our pasta in the morning, before service. By dinner we're working through the day's batch. Anything left at close goes home with the team; nothing carries over.