Sasha Marx is the Editorial Director of ChefSteps.com. He is a chef, writer, and editor, and he previously worked at the Michelin-starred and James Beard Award–winning restaurant Parachute in Chicago, as well as at Serious Eats and America’s Test Kitchen.

Sasha Marx

Pasta alla gricia is the most under-appreciated of the “core four” Roman pastas. Carbonara and cacio e pepe get all the glory, and amatriciana gets plenty of love as all tomato sauces do. But gricia is given short shrift and often defined by what it’s perceived to be missing: “carbonara without the egg,” or “white amatriciana.”That’s a shame, because gricia is every bit the equal of the other three—a silky emulsion of starchy pasta water and rendered guanciale fat, speckled with black pepper, with morsels of crispy pork, and a showering of salty Pecorino Romano. It’s time to give gricia its flowers.

Pasta alla Gricia