The Words to Know If You Love Italian Food

At Bucato, a restaurant in Los Angeles, California, chef Evan Funke makes thousands of pieces of pasta daily, all by hand.

Quick! An Italian lesson:

Pasta fatta a mano: Pasta made by hand. 
Pasta fatta in casa: Pasta made in-house.

Those are the phrases you want to see and hear when you’re dining in an Italian establishment—you’ll know the pasta is fresh and the staff takes its work seriously. Funke’s team uses the most basic, classic tools to produce theirs, which you can see both in the photos below and in action over at Yahoo Travel.

Despite a strict no cell-phone rule, tables at Funke’s restaurant are in high demand, and Eater just ranked Bucato among the 38 essential Los Angeles restaurants. Just goes to show: Eating honest-to-goodness handmade pasta is more important than Instagramming honest-to-goodness handmade pasta.


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A few of the tools of the trade at Bucato, where only simple wooden rolling pins and molds are employed to create hundreds of different pasta shapes. Photo credit: Melanie Dunea.


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Pasta is carefully crafted by hand daily. Photo credit: Melanie Dunea.


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A pasta maker at Bucato rolls out a “snake” from which smaller pieces will be cut and molded into pasta shapes. Photo credit: Melanie Dunea.


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A pasta maker at Bucato uses a dowel to create a groove in a length of pasta dough. Photo credit: Melanie Dunea.


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A pasta maker at Bucato rolls short lengths of dough against a garganelli board to create ridges. Photo credit: Melanie Dunea


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The restaurant produces thousands of pieces of pasta daily. Photo credit: Melanie Dunea