Ed eats

Bianco’s
Spinola Bay
St Julian’s
Tel: 2138 3030

Food: 7/10
Service: 9/10
Ambience: n/a
Value: 8/10
Overall: 8/10

So winter finally made it. Late, sudden and hesitant it is upon us with all that accompanies the colder weather. This includes complaining about the temperature and I don’t quite get it. It is cold. Wear more layers.

The calzone was lovely, with the spicy interior biting back at every turn. This parcel is all you could possibly wish for on a cold winter evening

Winter is about stews and roasts and soups and truffles. It is about whisky and Armagnac and other lovely distillates.

As the seasons change, so does the type of food and drink we consume. And as the festive season accelerates towards us headlong, the quantity, although not always the quality, increases steadily.

Unfortunately, it is also the season for colds and flus. Everyone around me seems to be succumbing to all sorts of ailments. I make sure to keep myself fed, bolstered by the belief that a very complete diet will stave off the evil bugs that hitch a free ride. So far it seems to be working for me.

This is also a time to enjoy the great indoors. Not that I normally need an excuse to stay away from the dizzying fresh air. I’m more of a cave dweller, happy to know the kitchen is close at hand just in case I need a quick nibble to fill the space between the snacks that I fit in between meals.

With the end of the world upon us, I’d hate to have to approach the apocalypse on an empty stomach. Eternity is a hell of a long time to spend hungry and I’m not taking chances.

One evening last week, I was heading home to tend to a miserable better half who was pretending to be sick. We all know that only men actually get sick but I pretended to overlook this. When we get the terrible condition known as ‘manflu’, only a handful of hospitals around the world are equipped to deal with this most devastating of illnesses.

They have machines that purr, ‘There, there’. They have professionals at hand to cook broth and add a shot of whisky to our warm drinks. They have a selection of old movies on their wide-screen TVs and they write things like ‘needs plenty of care, attention and fuss’ on their treatment charts. They understand ‘manflu’.

So there I was, heading home to a damsel in distress, and what better way to turn up than with a take-out. I wasn’t taking any chances with the choice though, preferring to leave that in the hands of the sick one. Bianco’s she said. Every time she’s been they treated her and her friends like royalty, the food was good, the prices reasonable and they had a particular salad she liked.

That proved me right. One cannot be properly sick and feel like a salad. And while I knew this to be true with a moral and fundamental certainty, there was no way I was going to say so. “Any real food for me?”, I caught myself asking. It slipped under the radar and I was treated to a list of grills and pizzas, with what sounded like quite an emphasis on the calzone. One of them, a hot and spicy one with jalapeños, spicy salami, fresh chilli and cheese caught my attention.

Now this was early in the evening so I was hesitant about the time. What if their pizza oven isn’t fired up and ready to go? No problems there, replied the exceedingly polite man on the phone. Food could be ready in 15 minutes. They offered to deliver but I was happy to collect. With the perennial traffic on the Regional Road, 15 minutes sounded like just about right.

Sixteen minutes later I was there. It was too early for many tables to be occupied but a sign on the door stated that they were already open for business.

A man at the counter, friendly and efficient, took one look at me rushing in with the unmistakeable expression of a man on a mission and asked, “Are you here for the take-out?”

He directed me towards the open kitchen where a young chef was placing our food in bags. He gave me a little plastic pot of tomato sauce, a box with my calzone in it, and one of those sealable plates with a spicy beef salad inside. I paid just under €17 and headed back out, not more than a minute after I’d entered.

And now for the movie-style montage. Pizza box in the footwell. Heating on max, aimed at the footwell. Drive home as quickly as possible, averaging a phenomenal 12 miles an hour. That was one dragging montage.

I can’t say I prefer take-out to eating out because it would be stretching things a little.

Eating out is more of an experience and more convivial. Yet I do have plenty in favour of take-home food.

I can warm up my plates (a practice that is alas grossly undervalued), use my own cutlery, drink wine from my stash and listen to the music I like. And hoping my parents never read this column for fear that they think their efforts were in vain, I can let some table manners slide.

The salad looked like most salads do to my sceptical eyes. Plenty of leaves make up most of the volume of the plate. On top of this lies seared and marinated beef that looked and tasted quite good.

Other than that, there was little to recommend it. While sick bay enjoyed it, I would have no reason on earth to ever order this dish.

There is no bacon, no croutons, no dash of crunch and colour of grated carrot. I’m biased here and admit it will take a lot of effort to get me to praise a salad. I’d have picked the lovely beef off the top and left the rest.

My pizza was a different story. The guys at Bianco’s have really understood calzone. They have analysed this problematic pizza, deconstructed it, and reconstructed it in the most elegant of take-home manners.

The box is a marvel all to itself, in the shape of a shoe box and roughly the same size. With this dedicated calzone box, one never has to squish the closed pizza into a regular pizza box.

Then there is the matter of the sauce. Tomato sauce is poured on the outside of a calzone. If they did this and popped the lot into a box, tomato sauce would stick to the lid and make a mess.

Not so when they serve this in a separate little tub that’s sealed for safety. You get to pour this onto the calzone when you’ve taken it out of the box and popped it onto your heated plate. And you get to pour as much of it as you like.

The calzone was lovely, with the spicy interior biting back at every turn. They haven’t gone all the way to volcanic levels of heat but they’re true to the description and this is one fiesty little darling. The pastry is crisp and dry, the fillings generous and this parcel of savoury goodness is all you could possibly wish for on a cold, winter evening.

If their front of house service is anything like what I experienced during my brief contact with Bianco’s staff, the experience must be quite lovely as well. The location is awkward where parking is concerned but the view of the bay must be lovely.

With food as comforting as this just 15 minutes away and the possibility of having them deliver it to my cave, I just had to add their number to my phonebook.

Winter is coming, as the House Stark words go, and I will not be caught unprepared. I’ll start by eating my way through their calzone menu and will be damned if I’m ever trying the salad.

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