Bellina Gourmet Pasta and Sauce Gift Set - Artisan Bucatini Pasta Kit with Authentic Italian Pasta Sauce - Italian Food Gifts Imported from Italy for Holiday, Birthday, Christmas, Hostess

Very tasty

The pasta is horrible!

I ordered this to try as I had never heard of this style of pasta & I love Italian food. Being organic is a definite plus. I would say this is like a very thick spaghetti noodle. Since I usually order angel hair (the very THIN spaghetti) this is a big change for me. Although when I slurp a noodle up, I just realized they are hollow! Interesting... Now I am wondering how on earth they pulled that off?! Anyway... I found the pasta sauce to be smooth, sweet, but rather bland. Again I think I am used to chunks of veggies in my sauce. This is more pureed. I also noticed that the pasta states it is for 9 servings, but the sauce is for 7. Maybe that is why it is bland as I cooked it all thinking it was a kit that was already in balance to be eaten all together. Everything was fine, but I don't think I would pay the current price of $25 to have this again.

We thoroughly enjoyed this pasta and sauce. The sauce comes in a glass bottle with a thin neck and a beer-bottle type cap; a bottle opener will come in handy. When I opened the sauce, my first impression was that it smelled like a rich tomato paste. Pouring it into a pan to heat it, I realized that it’s a bit thinner than the jarred sauces I’m used to. It has a strong ripe tomato flavor, and I could taste the sweetness of the cherry tomatoes used. It is a nicely balanced flavor that I really like, great for pasta on its own; though it’s not overly seasoned, making it a good sauce for adding your own ingredients to give it a personal touch. The pasta is like spaghetti, but both thicker and longer. It’s not a pasta shape I’d ever had before, which made it a fun and unique dining experience. It is dried and packaged in a U shape, so it’s about twice as long as the package itself (before cooking.) It cooked up well to our preferred texture, which is a little softer than al dente. We do like a good amount of sauce on our pasta, so we only cooked half of the pasta for the whole jar of sauce, and it was a perfect amount. From that half package we got five good sized servings. We will get another whole meal when we use the other half of the package, making this a better value than I originally realized, though we will have to use another sauce for it.