Creating something, like an art piece or an article, is easier to do when you make it elaborate. If you throw enough colors on a canvas, or a bunch of complicated words in an article, people get lost in the sauce (pun kinda intended). If people can’t make sense of what they’re looking at or what they’re reading, they can’t form an opinion. In the best cases, they’ll just get overwhelmed and move on. But in the worst cases, they’ll say the person had no idea what they were doing — maybe even call the whole thing a disaster.
Making a noodle dish is not much different — particularly when it comes to pasta.
Most people look at pasta as a plate full of noodles covered in sauce. In reality, it’s about the perfect union of noodles and sauce.
We could smother noodles in sauce with complex flavor profiles or throw a bunch of garnishes on there. But we believe the real trick to making a great pasta dish is in the art of simplicity. Letting the quality of the noodles and the expertise of the chef stand on their own.
Take our carbonara for example. It’s a dish that isn’t very complex, there aren’t a lot of layers to it, but that’s what makes it a thrilling plate to make. There’s no hiding. We have to be noodle experts we say we are in order to serve such a beautifully simple plate. If we weren’t, our awesome customers will be able to tell immediately.
Luckily for us, our Executive Chef Marco understands the art of simply making the perfect pasta noodle and how important it is to teach our other cooks that philosophy. It doesn’t hurt that he also gives them the highest quality ingredients to use!
And knowing that we have a leader who knows what a pasta noodle should taste like, someone who celebrates the fundamentals and the history of them, gives us the confidence to get rid of the extra stuff and just serve excellent noodles.
So the next time you come to Noodle Bar Phoenix and take a look at our menu, and you see each dish comes with a very simple description, you’ll know that it’s not because we don’t believe our selection is delicious and mouth watering and absolutely addicting. It’s just that we prefer to let the noodles and their taste speak for themselves.
But if you ever want to talk to us about the art of noodle making, trust us, we can talk for hours!