Faella - Spaghetti alla Chitarra (500g)

The chitarra - "guitar" in Italian - is a wooden frame strung with metal wires, used traditionally in Abruzzo to cut fresh pasta dough into square-section strands. The result is unlike standard spaghetti: square in cross-section rather than round, creating four distinct edges instead of one curved surface. That might sound like a minor detail, but it changes how sauce behaves on the pasta entirely.

Four edges grip differently. The angles catch and hold chunky, coarsely textured sauces in a way a round strand simply can't manage - the sauce adheres to the corners, tucks into the grooves, and stays put rather than running to the bottom of the bowl.

Faella has been making pasta in Gragnano since 1870, when Gaetano Faella founded his mill in a town producing dried pasta for centuries. The conditions are genuinely unusual: winds descending from the Lattari Mountains toward the Bay of Naples create a natural humidity and airflow almost purpose-built for pasta drying. These aren't just favourable conditions - they're the reason Gragnano became a pasta-producing town in the first place, and why the EU granted it IGP protected status in 2012.

Faella was one of just ten original producers to carry the IGP stamp - requiring pasta to be made within the town using local Lattari spring water, bronze extrusion dies, and low-temperature air drying for a minimum number of hours. Faella has operated this way for well over a century; the IGP requirements were essentially a formal recognition of what they were already doing.

The Spaghetti alla Chitarra is pressed through custom bronze dies that replicate the square cross-section of the hand-cut original. The rough, matte surface left by the bronze creates the texture that holds sauce - a signature you can see and feel compared to the glassy finish of Teflon-extruded pasta. Air-dried for a minimum of 40 hours, it holds its bite in a way that industrially-dried pasta simply doesn't.

Best for: Cacio e pepe, carbonara, lamb ragu, amatriciana, guanciale-based sauces.