It's Monday at noon, and on the terrace of the dining room of Hotel Almadraba in Roses, the wooden cart with wheels where rigatoni, the iconic dish, is prepared, moves from one table to another. Perhaps it is one of the most well-known dishes of the Subirós family, or perhaps it is because everyone wants to watch their dish being prepared in front of them. If one table orders it, be sure that the ones next to it will too. "It all started in the city of Lugano, in Switzerland, on the trips my father made with the Almadraba team to work in the winter," recalls Lluís Subirós, the youngest son, who says he must have been nine or ten years old when the Almadraba cooks went there.

It's curious because, for many years, macaroni was the dish on children's menus in restaurants. Let me say that, personally, I'm opposed to the concept of a "children's menu," but that's a topic for another article. Back to macaroni. The fact is, we've always had the odd restaurant that made it exceptionally well, like the macaroni at Carles Gaig's El Cardenal. But in general, people didn't go to restaurants to eat macaroni. As we know, everything changes, and this humble yet delicious dish has recently appeared on the menus of every new restaurant that opens. The standard in modern establishments is usually macaroni served on a metal tray where the cheese is melted on the spot with a blowtorch. When you ask which dishes are the most popular, it's often one of the top choices. When people see the word macaroniThey have the urge to order them. Who can blame them? Good macaroni is always appealing, and surely the idea that people go to restaurants to eat what they don't usually cook at home is no longer an unquestionable axiom. Or perhaps we've simply stopped cooking macaroni altogether, who knows?

It is an eternal debate, which has pitted Italians against the rest of the world. Pasta, undercooked or well cooked? Al dente Or soft? Hammered or spoon-shaped? Science has spoken, and dispelled any doubts: the less cooked it is, the better, because it will be healthier. Sinking your teeth into the pasta, chewing it thoroughly to digest it, is good because then the glycemic index doesn't rise rapidly, and this is essential for the body, and for having energy in the long term, too, says nutritionist Anna Grífols.