The best pasta dishes change as the year progresses, and Michigan has four beautiful, bountiful seasons to cherish. In the frigid months, a rich Bolognese or short rib ragù warms like a wool coat. In the spring, foragers pluck garlicky ramps to be delivered to chefs, who often stuff them into ravioli or sauté them in hot oil. The summer months bring plump, sweet corn agnolotti plated with creamy sauces and meaty, blistered chanterelle mushrooms. In the fall, butternut squash ravioli comforts with its sweet flavor and luscious texture.
Detroit has a rather underrated pasta scene, but since I moved here two years ago, I’ve unearthed some of the city’s best wellkept secrets. Some are year-round staples, while others are seasonal specials. Regardless, there’s no greater representation of Detroit’s dining scene than a well-made pasta dish. So enjoy these seven pastas often; they’re some of the best the city has to offer.
Linguine and Clams at Mabel Gray
Chef James Rigato drew inspiration from Japanese ramen when concocting this prestigious dish. Fresh linguine and steamed clams wade in a white wine-butter sauce spiked with garlic, fish sauce, and parsley, but it’s the sauce-to-pasta ratio here that’s so striking. This bowl is meant to be tilted to your mouth and slurped, much like you would enjoy ramen at a stall on the streets of Tokyo. Rigato artfully incorporates his world travels into his cooking — that’s the engine of Mabel Gray — and here he creates a whole new aesthetic for enjoying vongole. The dish usually appears around December, proving that you don’t need the entire Feast of the Seven Fishes; you need just one.
Bolognese at Forest
Forest is the definition of a hidden gem. This seasonal, Italian-inspired grill is located east of Woodward Avenue in Birmingham, near some leafy residential streets. With streetlevel glass windows, white tablecloths, and shining silverware, Forest beams proudly. But as much as the restaurant’s interior radiates, the brilliant pasta housed within is the real divine light.
Forest consistently provides some of the most imaginative, delicious seasonal pastas in the metro area. Expect a deftly creative use of mushrooms and corn in the summer, ramps and peas in the spring, and so on. However, the traditional Bologna-style Bolognese anchors the menu year-round. The Bolognese is a blend of beef and pork, cooked lovingly with spices, served with an egg yolk-enriched, hand-cut tagliatelle. Head chef Talia Clark uses a mattarello to roll the golden sheets of pasta fresh each morning. Once you try the Bolognese, move in for the more seasonal offerings. The pastas are meant to be shared, so bring a few people with you. They’ll thank you for doing so.
Spring Pasta Set at Selden Standard
Selden Standard’s menu rotates seasonally, which means customers end up longing for dishes like the summer sweet corn agnolotti. However, if you go to this Midtown stalwart in the spring, you’ll be privy to its Spring Pasta Set, a dish that usually involves anchovy, stracciatella, and rapini. The last two springs, I’ve enjoyed Selden’s deep, chewy, handmade orecchiette with rimmed edges. These orecchiette (meaning “little ears” in Italian) are tiny but cavernous, famously picking up little bits of cheese, rapini, and breadcrumbs with each spoon scoop. Everything is evenly seasoned, meaning each bite packs a consistent punch of flavor: light, lemony, buttery, and balanced. Some ingredients may change based on their availability, but the fact remains that Selden’s Spring Pasta Set is the long-awaited respite after a harsh winter. It’s recommended eating for every enthusiastic diner in the city.
Bucatini con le Sarde at Medusa
Medusa is chef Anthony Lombardo’s love letter to Sicily, a fertile island with traditions distinct from those in Italy’s inland. Sicilian food is esoteric and exciting due to its Mediterranean, Spanish, and Arab influence. There’s a general focus on freshly caught seafood, produce like eggplant, square pizza (Sicilian-style inspired Detroit-style), and agrodolce (sweet and sour sauce). Pine nuts, raisins, capers, olives, anchovies, and sardines all have a way of finding themselves in Sicilian cookery.
Pasta con le sarde (which often features sardines, breadcrumbs, and lemon) is one famous Sicilian dish that I find consistently alluring. Medusa pairs fleshy, oily sardines with saffron, fennel, black currant, and a pinenut crumble on top. The dish has a subtle sweetness, one of the main tenets of Sicilian flavor. I feel that Italian food could often use a sour element, and some of the dishes at Medusa fill this gap beautifully.
Rigatoni with Braised Short Rib and Parmesan Crema at Bar Gabi
While most short rib pastas veer into ragù territory, chef Gabriel Botezan of Bar Gabi imagines a wonderful short rib pasta that plays more like a cacio e pepe. Tender, toothsome, hulking rigatoni are coated with a Parmesan cream sauce and served with succulent chunks of braised short ribs. Each bite of rigatoni is equally buttery and peppery. The grassiness of the black pepper pairs especially well with the short rib. In all my time eating short rib pasta, I can’t say I’ve ever had an iteration quite like this. This dish wasn’t supposed to be a mainstay, but customers let Gabriel and Gabriela Botezan (the husband-and-wife couple who run the restaurant) know: We’ll riot if you take it off the menu.
Spicy Rigatoni at Tiliani
Running a halal Italian restaurant can’t be easy, but chef Hisham Diab pulls it off with grace. One memorable offering is the spicy rigatoni, a tomato sauce swirled with cream, then infused with a Calabrian chile crisp spiked with anise seed, cinnamon, shallot, and garlic. The sauce is then tossed with freshly extruded rigatoni, creating a bright pasta dish that flashes red like a neon sign in Vegas. The spicy rigatoni sizzles tenderly on its own, but a dollop of herbed ricotta flecked with fresh tarragon, basil, oregano, and mint soothes and cools luxuriously. It’s amazing just how much subtle flavor it packs, and I’m always impressed with the way Diab has made an Italian American staple his own. For only $18, it’s one of those pasta dishes you can afford to put in your regular rotation.
Capellini al Limone at Ladder 4
Ladder 4 is a wine drinker’s heaven, selling everything from the classic to the obscure. Its “by the glass” section features a robust selection of reds, whites, skin contacts, and rosés. As an eager novice in the world of wine, I find that the move at Ladder 4 is to sit at the bar and ask for the bartender’s personal recommendation. I was recently delivered a funky, citrusy chardonnay that blew me away and made the perfect pairing for chef John Yelinek’s pasta limone.
The entirely house-made capellini al limone starts with capellini fortified with egg yolks, creating a rich, luscious pasta with plenty of good bite. In the pan, a shower of 48-month-old Parmigiano-Reggiano, some good butter, pasta water, and lemon juice swirl and emulsify to create this sensational sauce. This is one of the more indulgent pasta dishes around, but it’s balanced in such a way that it never feels decadent. This is a great pasta to pair with some of Ladder 4’s wonderful wine or even one of the choice lemon grappas. (Truthfully, I had both.)
This story originally appeared in the June 2026 issue of Hour Detroit magazine. To read more, pick up a copy of Hour Detroit at a local retail outlet. Click here to get our digital edition.
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