By Tim Carman

Rosemarino d'Italia, an intimate Italian outpost in Del Ray, panders to a popular American bias: Fresh pasta always outperforms the dried stuff. As far as prejudices go, it's a reasonable one. I mean, if freshly made dough works better for Mexican tortillas, it should do the same for Italian noodles, right?

Besides, according to our current thinking about restaurant cuisine, any ingredient that comes in a box and arrives via an 18-wheeler automatically carries the stench of evil. "Fresh" is the avenging angel, here to save us from the tyranny of American manufacturing that co-opted our food system from small farmers and our dear, talcum-powdered grandmothers who once prepared everything from scratch. Only the venal — or the feral — would reject fresh in favor of processed.

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Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/