It's a handmade pasta, so you probably will see it in nicer restaurants rather than stores, but if you have a place that makes fresh pasta in your town that's another place to look. Or make them yourself!
Orecchiette. It's a very small cup (the name means little ear) which holds a little bit of sauce, but not so much that you get overzealous and try to fill it up.
Disagree, I don't think having a favorite is dish dependent. You probably have a favorite pasta dish and your preferred noodle for it. Probably your favorite shape.
This is my answer too. I like different noodles with spaghetti sauce than I do with alfredo. You wouldn't want elbows in lasagna. This is why we have so many variations.
Spaghetti/capellini/linguini. Wrapping pasta on the fork is part of the fun!
Alternatively, fusilli.
Penne and other hollow variations are among the least favorite because they can retain a bit of water inside and getting that onto your tongue is not fun.
Farfalle, because its also a firework. If im not taking fireworks into consideration I'd have to say rigatoni, they have a good heft to them and take on sauce well. Good with butter and hot sauce.
Oh man, my local shop sells these as "makkaroni" and I was so confused, because I knew those to be a different shape. Now I just checked Wikipedia and it literally has a heading like:
"Makkaroni" in Germany
And it says that apparently we refer to any longer, straight, tube-shaped pasta as "makkaroni". I guess, it's alright that we don't use the Italian spelling after all. 🫠
Lasagna plates if that counts. If not Macaroni. Compromise between shelf space per serving and ease of getting the portion size right (1.25dl raw, 2.5dl cooked). Contender is spaghetti which wins on shelf space but I always end up with too much or too little without resorting to the kitchen scales.
I find the larger variants are hard to get a good mix of sauce and pasta in your mouth regardless if you use a spoon or fork.
In general my preference is tortiglioni/elicoidali, but that doesn't work with everything.
As long pasta I prefer thick spaghetti-like shapes, like vermicelli, spaghetti alla chitarra or tonnarelli (with egg).
Obviously if we are talking about fresh pasta there is also much to choose from, but I would say one of my favorite type is quadrucci, very good in soups.
Also good gnocchi are amazing (do they count as pasta?), bad gnocchi are terrible.
Pasta that I don't like the most, probably farfalle and bucatini. Fun fact, bucatini are called "abbotta straccioni" in Rome, which roughly translates to "peasants stuffers", because more uneducated people who wouldn't know how to eat long pasta would "suck" and ingest lots of air (due to the hole) and get filled more, so restaurants could serve smaller portions. To this day, I will take tonnarelli/gnocchi/rigatoni with amatriciana to bucatini any day.
Lots of americans from these answers but it entirely depends on the sauce. Some types of pasta dont necessarily work with certain dishes. Some sauces work with multiple types.. try making a carbonara with penne or a mac and cheese which seems to be a popular choice here with spaghetti, they just wont work as dishes. Maybe some people jist eat the same pasta dish all the type and thats how they are basimg their answers.