Luxury Touches for Pasta Dishes – A Guide to the Hi-Lo Trend
Menus of all shapes and sizes have been capturing the momentum of the “Hi-Lo” trend spotlighted by Flavor & the Menu for this year’s flavor predictions. It’s about putting luxury ingredients on a common, popular base and winning both consumer acclaim and great margins. Pasta is one of the original Hi-Lo foundations - think lobster Mac and cheese or truffled spaghetti - and is primed for exploration. We caught up with Chef Margaret Occhipinti of LifeWorks, Aramark’s upscale B&I division, to get a chef’s take on going Hi-Lo with pasta.
Where would you start with a Hi-Lo approach to pasta?
There are some obvious go-tos for Hi-Lo with pasta — truffles, a bit of caviar, lobster - all of them work well. But there are many pathways to luxury! It’s all about combining something perceived as special or indulgent with the popularity and comfort of pasta; done right it’s magnetic!
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What are some of the other pathways?
One is experiential - tableside preparations and theatrical finishes, from tossing pasta in a cheese wheel to pouring a decadent broth onto a dish at service.
What about ingredient and flavor pairings, and how do you make it work from a food cost standpoint?
High-end proteins are a smart approach both for operators and guests. Imagine a wagyu short rib ragu, maybe spiked with porcini or truffles, creamy and decadent. You could use a super-comfort food pasta shape, like pastina, and make it like a risotto for the foundation. As an operator, it doesn’t have to take a lot of that expensive protein to make a high-value dish, and the guest is definitely going to be satisfied.
Seafood is another way in - it’s not something guests are likely to cook at home and has that same luxury appeal as well. Bucatini with a nice piece of grouper and a Calabrian chili broth, poured tableside? Now we’re talking!
How does this go over in your operations?
In corporate dining, we serve a lot of young professionals that are eager to try new things, taste what they’ve heard about, and share it with their social circles. When we give them an opportunity to “plus up” dishes like pasta with something special, they’ll take us up on it every time and pay a little extra for it!
Great stuff! We'll take that grouper with the Calabrian chile broth now please!