What?
The Sagaform Project pasta server and cheese grater (£10, Ocado) is a bugle-shaped steel tower with obverse grating face. It is open-bottomed and sinusoidally toothed to snag pasta.
Why?
If you have to ask, you cannot know.
Well?
The futility of hope. The false consolations of art. The feeling your spaghetti could do with more cheese. These are big issues, only one of which is addressed by this utensil that portions and lifts pasta and grates cheese. It was designed by Peter Pinzke and Johan Bergström, “a practical-minded skateboarder and a culinary composer”, whose studio “lies in the medieval part of central Malmö”. They are pictured on the box in black and white, one in a beard, the other a polo neck, both staring at something very far away. They’re going for Ingmar Bergman retrospective but, to be honest, they look more like Simon and Garfunkel. One gets a strong sense they would rather be making live-edge coffee tables or literary wall decals or ornamental driftwood pieces that pointlessly take up space in the hallway, but we all start somewhere.
In this case, somewhere is a pastaslev med parmesanrivare, or “big pasta beak”. And it is truly a striking thing. In the hand, it is reminiscent of a Venetian bird-mask. Sat upright, it thrusts forcefully skyward, gleaming like Concorde or a countertop Shard. Is that why it is part of a series called Project? Or because it started life as a piece of uni coursework? We don’t know.
There are no instructions on the box, because instruction is inelegant. Judging by the pictures, the hollow neck of the device is a spaghetti measure – albeit one without any measurements on it. I think the circumference holds a generous serving for two, but it’s annoying not to know. The prongs work well, gripping pasta firmly. The grater is circular-bored, producing short shreds that melt on a whisper. Perfect for parmesan, but not too versatile. What can I say about the Project pasta server? Its full-metal, javelin-headed confidence suggests creators not to be messed with. I don’t want to be grated to death by Art Garfunkel, or for my last stage direction to be: “Exit, pursued by a beard.” So, I’ll resort to the most pretentious yet non-committal tool in the critics’ kit: it is what it is. Sorry if that grates.
Redeeming features?
Unnecessary, yet stylish enough to keep the customer satisfied.
Counter, drawer, back of the cupboard?
Between the typewriter and coffee-table erotica. 3/5
