Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

There are 4 ingredients in cacio e pepe. Water, pasta, cheese, pepper. Butter and/or olive oil are cheating. Romans would bite their thumb at you, sir!

The key is that you need starchy pasta, cooked in barely enough water to cook the pasta, so that you end up with a VERY starchy water. That emulsifies the cheese into a sauce. Butter/olive oil shouldn't be necessary.

(My actual recipe uses butter and olive oil. It's really hard to get enough starch with some Barilla or other grocery store brand pasta. But I'm looking to try it with starchy pasta from the Italian market next time and omit the cheater ingredients.)

Yeah well the Italians are horrified at our Americanized abomination of "meat sauce" where we add meat to the red tomato sauces, but they can have my Sunday gravy when they pry it from my chubby, dead, American fingers.

I think that's true but it's not necessarily because it's not available.  If you look around most large metropolitan areas, you can find authentic Chinese food.  I used to bring in my vendors from Foxconn, Compal, and some others, for week-long Quarterly Business Reviews.  They always liked to hit up the BBQ and Tex-Mex places, but they also always wanted to have one meal at this local Chinese place right next to our headquarters.  They loved it, and told me that it was very authentic.  They were often surprised because I told them just to order whatever they felt like, I wasn't afraid to try anything, and in general I liked all of it.

so, it's a fancy starch/carbs with cheese seasoned with salt and pepper?

Could just have a potato or hunk of bread
or rice!!!