I am italian living abroad... and De Cecco is the only pasta that you can consistently find that does not cook to a mish mash
Can you find better? Yes of course, also from the same small village in Abruzzo Fara San Martino (see Cocco), or most of the produce from Gragnano, or Rummo (from Benevento).
But among the really commercial ones, not many are better than De Cecco, and even if they are, they are very difficult to find
Btw I am biased: my grandmother was from Fara San Martino
I exclusively cook with cocco, to me it's miles beyond the competition but also a lot more expensive than rummo or de cecco. Haven't don't any direct comparisons between rummo and cocco, would you say the quality is similar?
In my opinion Rummo is more commercial than Cocco, and despite being a very valid product, doesn't have the same quality.
Basically Cocco bought the old bronze machinery from De Cecco, when it still was a relatively small family business and not the huge company that it is today, and keeps using them... with an overhead that justifies the premium (if you like good pasta).
Anyhow, as I said, I mostly cook with De Cecco because it's easy to find in the supermarket, sometimes I go to an Italian shop that's close to where I live, and buy some artisanal pasta, and on rare occasions on holidays, I make home-made pasta (tagliatelle or pasta alla chitarra, and ragù as a sauce... it's really not that difficult, and it tastes much better than anything you can buy)
> it's really not that difficult, and it tastes much better than anything you can buy
I agree that it's not that difficult to make, but I would argue that it's not necessarily much better in every case.
As my chief witness I enter Marcella Hazan. The late doyenne of Italian Cuisine.
In "The Classic Italian Cook Book: The Art of Italian Cooking and the Italian Art of Eating" she has more to say on the subject, but in short and from [1]:
"Although some types of pasta, like tagliatelle, are best made fresh at home, others, like spaghetti, should be bought dried. Pasta should be matched carefully to sauce."
I think that's the key. It really depends on the type of pasta and the sauce used.
That said: There's no doubt that ragu with freshly made tagliatelle is something devine.
I grew up in Italy but I live now in Spain.
If there's something I understood from living in Italy is that food in Italy is not only food, but also a container of bias and emotional investments.
Regarding food, people really take sides and hardly consider alternatives.
On the other side, probably this is the reason why it's quite hard to find mediocre food in Italy.
Yes, you are right about this and tourist traps are a global phenomenon.
In Barcelona, for instance, in places where tourists don't go, restaurants might be really bad, which never happened to me in Italy.
There's also a culture for keeping food as a family/friends value, which I don't see everywhere else.
Voiello make pretty decent linguine or spaghetti.
Never tried any other shape from them.
La Molisana is also OK among the commercial ones.
But if you have the chance to find it, you should try some pasta from Gragnano, they normally have pretty small businesses, so it is not so easy to find abroad.
Agnesi seems ok and is available here in out-of-the-way Brazil. De Cecco seems fine but is typically more expensive for reasons unknown to me. Barilla is also sometimes present here. Most brazilian brands don't or won't use hard wheat, though the local preference is for mushy pasta, so I don't know if this is cause or effect
btw: the "fortified pasta" is something I cannot stand. You american should lobby to make "normal pasta" the only one available.