As Dominicans, one of our favorite dishes is pasta | The Larimar Shop

In The Dominican Republic, we love spaghetti!

According to some investigations, Spaghetti pasta was invented between 1000 and 1100 AD on the Italian island of Sicily, although popular history says that it has its origin in China and that Marco Polo brought the knowledge of this food to Venice. We are not aware of who introduced the spaghetti pasta in the Dominican Republic but do know that the former state company Molinos Dominicanos started the production of this pasta approx. 65 years ago. Nowadays there are about four companies producing spaghetti pasta and other pasta products, nevertheless, customers have also the opportunity to buy imported pasta.

How did we inherit this love for pasta?

Asking around we learned that spaghetti pasta was made at home at the beginning, that it seems to have been introduced by some Italian visitor/adventurer who most probably fell in love with this tropical paradise, the Dominican Republic, and decided to stay here, got married and taught his family how to make and enjoy this delicious pasta, which has become part of our regular meals.

In most of the cases, spaghetti is a quick meal solution for our natives:

For breakfast:

Every morning you will find, especially where there is a construction, food carts or a charcoal-burning stove, placed in different places in the Dominican Republic selling plain red sauce spaghetti for those workers or employees who didn’t have time to have their breakfast at home and happily prefer to satisfy their hunger with a good plate of spaghetti.

For lunch:

When the housewife decides to skip the daily traditional meal of white rice, red beans, and meat, spaghetti will be the first choice, cooked with red sauce and meat, beef or chicken; green or ripe fried plantain is served with spaghetti.

For dinner:

White or red sauce spaghetti is loved by the whole family as dinner and is an option for the housewives when all the necessary food/ingredients for a regular dinner menu (plantains, eggs, salami, for example) are not available.

As fast food:

Not everybody in the Dominican Republic can afford to go to a resort, a restaurant or buying food on the street, so when a trip to the beach or to a river is planned with a low budget, spaghetti will always be the main dish, usually with red sauce and bread.

As a snack:

The Dominican housewives are very creative and spaghetti shakes is an option to treat their family in the afternoon. They boil the spaghetti, blend it, milk and vanilla or cinnamon, sugar and ice are added and a delicious spaghetti shake is ready to be enjoyed.