Fettuccine Alfredo

Pasta with butter and parmesan cheese

Fettuccine Alfredo is a simple and tasty first course of Roman origin. It is the classic Butter and Parmesan Pasta made with egg fettuccine seasoned with a creamy emulsion of cheese and butter that creating an enveloping flavourful sauce almost suitable for any picky mouth.  The dish was made for the first time in 1914 by Alfredo Di Lelio, owner of a restaurant to restore strength to his wife who had just given birth. The wife was so amused by the dish that she convinced Alfredo to add it to the menu of the restaurant. That day in the restaurant there were two Americans who loved that dish so much that they suggested adding it to the Menu !

A few years later, famous American actors Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks arrived at the restaurant, and they appreciated the fettuccine so much, naming the good Alfredo “Alfredo the King of Noodles”, awarding him with ‘the golden cutlery. Since then, the Fettuccine Alfredo has become a true icon of Italian food in USA and the Roman restaurant an obligatory stop for Americans visiting Rome. In the United States you probably won’t find an Italian restaurant that doesn’t have fettuccine Alfredo on the menu. However, usually they will not be prepared following the original recipe of the Alfredo restaurant in Rome, but with the addition of cream, which make the creation of the creamy sauce easier.

Alfredo di Lelio sold his restaurant in via della Scrofa in 1943 and opened another one in 1950 with his son, “Il vero Alfredo” in Piazza Augusto Imperatore 30, where the dish is still made according to the original recipe, handed down from his father in son, and served with the gold cutlery donated by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks