The Favorite Pasta Dishes Of 13 Celebrity Chefs

There are few things better in life than pasta. The Italian staple comes in so many different shapes, lengths, and textures and can be paired with a never-ending array of sauces and accompaniments. While pasta's mother country is Italy, it has connections to places around the world, including China. 

People have a soft spot for pasta because it's a flavorsome and filling comfort food. There are memories attached to it, whether it's Mom's take on bolognese, a meal from a beloved Italian restaurant on your block, or even a dish cooked by a Nonna in an Italian kitchen. On the other side of the coin, there are the pastas-gone-wrong, ranging from those that resemble glue to noodles topped with poorly-seasoned and desperately sad sauce. Whether you're cooking or dining out, it's good to know which dishes are worth trying — or to confirm that your trusty, reliable order is worth being a creature of habit for.

And nobody knows the best pasta dishes out there quite like celebrity chefs. We've rounded up some of their favorite pasta dishes so you can add them to your must-eat list.

Bobby Flay has been in the food industry for three decades and is now a household name. In 2021, while filming "Bobby and Giada in Italy," he stopped by Roscioli Ristorante Salumeria in Rome, where he consumed his favorite pasta dish: pasta with anchovy and butter. Flay watched as the chef prepared the pasta with sweet butter, instead of the standard extra virgin olive oil. The chef notes that the anchovies are delicate that they must be cooked without heat; he instead adds a ladle of warm pasta water to the pan to cook the fish slowly.

It's a simple dish — just pasta, butter, and anchovies — but great care is taken with each ingredient to bring out the best in it. When Flay sits down to eat the plate of pasta, he is thrilled. "When you taste it, that's when the magic starts to happen," he says. 

At 33, Marco Pierre White was the youngest chef ever to receive three Michelin stars. He's mentored and trained chefs including Gordon Ramsay, Heston Blumenthal, and Jason Atherton, so, it's safe to say that White knows what he's talking about when it comes to food. 

White shares his beloved recipe for tagliolini with prawns in an article for The National. Tagliolini is not to be confused with tagliatelle. Although their names sound similar (both come from "tagliare" — Italian for "to cut") and both are made with eggs, tagliolini's strands are fastened into a nest. 

White's tagliolini with prawns is, as he says, "on a level with [his] favorite pasta sauce of all time, which [he] ate many years ago in Rome."  With onion, garlic, tomatoes, herbs, and prawns, it's easy to see why it's a favorite of his. He emphasizes the importance of not overcooking the pasta, which he explains can alter the flavor of the sauce it's served with. And while White jests that no seafood pasta should be served with Parmesan, he leaves the decision up to the reader. "If you like a bit of Parmesan, dear reader, then slap it on," he says. 

Alex Guarnaschelli keeps herself busy. She's the chef and owner of Manhattan's Butter and the host and judge of several cooking shows, including "Chopped," "Iron Chef America," and "Supermarket Stakeout." Needless to say, she knows her stuff. 

Guarnaschelli raves about the pesto pasta from La Merenda in Nice, France. Forget the trusty old pesto sitting in the fridge or cupboard — this is the real deal. In an interview with Business Insider, Guarnaschelli says that "It was an ethereal meal that changed my life. Especially the pasta." 

The pesto pasta dish in question is made with tagliatelle, a ribbon-like pasta made with eggs and semolina flour dough. Guarnaschelli praised the simplicity of the meal when she says, "The pasta being dropped on the hot pesto in front of me made me tear up." While the restaurant doesn't currently hold any stars, La Merenda is listed in the Michelin Guide as "a genuine culinary landmark of Nice." Adding it to the bucket list!

First- generation Italian-American chef Rocco DiSpirito has some thoughts when it comes to pasta. In an interview with EatingWell, DiSpirito shares that pasta with Parmesan and butter is "the best comfort meal ever invented." More specifically, he loves fettuccine Alfredo and has a recipe for it in his cookbook, "Everyday Delicious." 

The James Beard award-winning chef shares how this dish combines "a bunch of butter" and hot fettuccine. Round it all out with a generous serving of Parmigiano Reggiano, and you've got something super comforting and tasty. Traditional fettuccine Alfredo is made with just butter and Parmesan, though DiSpirito does add chicken to his recipe, too. "You can argue with how good it is," he says. Chicken or no chicken, it sounds undeniably delicious.

Chef, restauranteur, and "Iron Chef America" judge Donatella Arpaia allows her Italian roots to influence the way she cooks and eats. As a kid, she spent her summers in Toritto, Italy, and the rest of the year in New York City at her father's restaurant. 

In an interview with Business Insider, Arpaia shares that her favorite meal was the imbustata from Manhattan's famed and family-owned Cellini. Imbustata is a baked, envelope-shaped pasta. The Midtown restaurant serves it with chicken shiitake in a creamy vodka sauce. Arpaia says that the restaurant is "classic old school Italian done right."

Arpaia eventually developed her own take on imbustata, which she shared a recipe for on her website. It includes chicken and shiitake (a nod to her love of Cellini's signature dish), and a generous coating of mozzarella. 

Gordon Ramsay is the chef who'll tell someone off faster than you can say "idiot sandwich." He's is an industry legend with eight Michelin stars across his restaurants. In his 2007 book, "Three-Star Chef," Ramsay remarks that a ravioli with lobster, langoustine, and salmon, served with lemongrass and chervil velouté, is a "long-standing favorite" of his. 

Unlike some of his predecessors on this list, Ramsay is not keeping it simple with this dish. Naturally, the "Hell's Kitchen" lead is flaunting those Michelin star skills. While the making of this meal would be the work of (kitchen) nightmares for some, it's undeniable how delicious this dish sounds. The ingredients in this dish are both humble and indulgent, while the combination of the reliable and the unexpected makes for an exquisite meal.

"The Naked Chef" credits the Tuscan meal, rotolo, as not only his favorite dish, but also the reason he has a career. In 1997, Jamie Oliver made an unintentional appearance in a BBC Christmas special at The River Cafe and is shown making this dish on camera. It marked his first television appearance. 

Years later, in an interview with The Guardian, he reflects on that time, the dish, and how both impacted his life. He explains that Rotolo isn't a typical bowl of pasta; it's more similar to a lasagna or a cannelloni. The word "rotolo" means "scroll or coil" — which is exactly what happens to the pasta sheets. The filling is comprised of greens, ricotta, Parmesan, and porcini. Once poached, it's baked in a tomato sauce and served with unctuous sage butter. Rotolo can also be adapted to the seasonal produce that's available and include ingredients like butternut squash.

Oliver says, "I love the ritual of making [rotolo]." And so, his favorite dish lives on in his restaurants; it's a menu staple at Jamie's Italian.

In a 2022 Rockstar Eater video shot at his former Los Angeles restaurant, Ospero, Austrian-born chef Wolfgang Puck showed viewers how to make pumpkin ravioli with brown butter sauce. Puck has decades of knowledge, experience, and accolades (including multiple Michelin stars), and his preparation of this pasta dish shows why he's a household name.

Puck starts with a generous serving of butter, sage leaves for flavor, pepper, and chopped pecans. He adds the cooked pumpkin ravioli to the pan, then plates up the ravioli, drizzles the brown butter sauce, and grates cheese to finish. This seasonal pasta would be a great recipe to cozy up to on a cold fall evening. Although Ospero is closed now, viewers can still see how to make this dish at home by watching the video. 

The late American chef Anthony Bourdain lorded cacio e pepe as one of his favorite pasta dishes and "the greatest thing in the history of the world." "Cacio e pepe" translates to "cheese and pepper" — and that's exactly what it's made of. 

In an episode of his show, "No Reservations," Bourdain visits Roma Sparita in Italy to try this classic pasta dish. The restaurant is tucked away from the hustle and bustle and overlooks the Piazza di Santa Cecilia in Trastevere. Bourdain is served the buttered, peppered, and cheesy pasta in a bowl made of Parmesan (yes, Parmesan). In his delight, Bourdain asserts, "I'm sure this is illegal somewhere," before he contemplates concealing the restaurant's identity as "Restaurant X" for filming purposes so that it remains as it is. Though, its location is revealed in Season 6, Episode 20, and so is that unforgettable bowl of food. Of course, this Roman dish doesn't require a Parmesan bowl for it to be made; classic recipes determine that a regular bowl would do the job just as well.

In 2002, the Michelin-starred Alain Ducasse wrote an article for The New York Times entitled, "The Chef." In it, he shared a recipe for olive mill pasta, a dish that encapsulates the things he enjoys most about cooking — "stirring, seasoning, reducing the liquid, enjoying the warmth and aromas around you, trusting your palate and then sharing what you have prepared with others," as he says. 

He uses an artisanal strozzapreti, which is popular in regions like Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany. Perhaps in homage to the twisted shape of the pasta, the name strozzapreti literally translates to "priest stranglers." Ducasse goes on to describe this type of pasta as "one of [his] favorites." Ducasse learned to cook strozzapreti in rural Liguria from farmers who pressed the oil themselves. This dish is unique in that the flavorful base is made first, then the pasta and the stock are added to the dish. Ducasse describes the olive mill pasta as a "modest dish," but that didn't stop him serving it at his restaurant in Monte Carlo. 

But he's right, these ingredients are humble: onions, fingerling potatoes, tomatoes, garlic, basil, scallions, and cheese (never forget the cheese). So, it's more than possible to whip this up at home.

Spaghetti carbonara is a staple, classic, and well-loved pasta dish on restaurant menus. Beloved English cook Delia Smith echoes this sentiment and shares that this is her favorite pasta dish in a recipe she posted on her website. 

Smith is the unofficial queen of cooking in the U.K., with a career spanning over five decades. She has enough cookbooks to fill a bookshelf and has contributed to English cooking shows for many years. With a lifetime achievement award from the Guild of Food Writers under her belt, it's impossible not to trust her judgment. 

Smith's recipe for pasta alla carbonara is what she calls the "the very best version" of the classic dish. If you're choosing store-bought pasta, Smith notes to select a packet with the words "pasta di semola di grano duro." She includes smoked pancetta and Pecorino Romano cheese – farewell corrupted carbonara made with bacon and Parmesan! Though, Smith's recipe does include a unique twist: She adds double cream to her egg sauce. Who are we to judge? If one thing's for sure, it's that this recipe sounds delectable.

If the name Angela Hartnett sounds familiar, well, it should. She is one of the world's top female celebrity chefs and a protégé of Gordon Ramsay. In the '90s, she worked under the boisterous head chef at London restaurant Aubergine. Since then, she's secured her own Michelin stars, including at one of her own restaurants, Murano. 

On an episode of the Dish Podcast, Hartnett admits that one of her favorite dishes is aglio e oilo. She rattles off the modest ingredients in this no-sauce spaghetti dish: garlic, chiles, olive oil, and parsley. Not only does aglio e olio sound delicious, but the no-sauce nature of the dish means it doesn't require a Michelin star to whip up. Hartnett's fondness for the pasta dish, plus her cooking prowess and Italian heritage, confirms that aglio e olio is a must-try.

Anne-Sophie Pic is legendary when it comes to French cooking. Why? Well, she is a fourth-generation chef, was named World's Best Female Chef in 2012 in the World's 50 Best Restaurants Awards, holds multiple Michelin stars, and has her own cookery school, Scook. Pic's mantra is "free expression and audacity" and this most certainly presents itself in her signature dish, berlingots. 

Now berlingots might evoke an image of bright-colored, triangle-shaped, and almost dainty sweets. And technically, berlingot translates to "boiled sweet." Pic, however, has flipped this common understanding on its head with her pasta innovation: triangular pasta parcels not dissimilar in appearance and shape to the famous sweet. 

The berlingot's filling is infused with ginger, bergamot, and a smoked Banon watercress consommé. In an interview with France Today, Pic notes her inspiration for the dish comes from the sweets she adored during her childhood, but also her desire to create something reminiscent of ravioles de Romans, a French specialty. She explains that the novelty of this dish stems from the shape of the pasta, which ensures a delicate ratio of pasta to filling. Pic goes beyond tradition, and tried-and-true classics, to create something truly remarkable. While Pic doesn't use the word "favorite" to describe this dish, her dedication and thoughtfulness in to crafting this pasta dish are undeniable.