Ed eats

Caruso Bistrot
Triq il-Kappella
San Ġwann
Tel: 9994 7625

Food: 8/10
Service: 7/10
Ambience: 5/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 7/10

Over the weekend I drove by a billboard that, in no uncertain terms, asked me to support local business by buying imported furniture from their representatives in Malta. It is obviously an attempt to stem the steady flow of clients who have headed over to Sicily to buy the same stuff at a fraction of the price. And judging by other people in the same industry that I’ve spoken to, the sentiment is quite widely shared.

This spurred me into an angry rant that lasted 20 minutes. I won’t repeat all of it here. We’ll run out of newsprint if I do, even after the unprintable words have been purged. In short, I felt that a market is made of those who have money in their pockets and those who are selling stuff, with all decisions taken by those with money in their pockets. An industry that has ripped off the market for so long can’t reasonably specify where the very same market is to spend its hard-earned cash.

If pricing is sensible, service is excellent and post-purchase treatment is remarkable, the market will react positively, without the need for the industry to beg. The restaurant business has been under a simi­lar onslaught for a few years now. Almost every region in Italy is now represented in Malta, with most of these businesses owned by natives of the region, brave people who have sacrificed living in their hometown to come over and set up shop.

And as the market decides where to trade food for cash, the better ones survive and the weaker ones close down. I can’t count the number of restaurants I’ve been to, have been disappointed with, and that have since vanished. This natural selection seems to be working for restaurants, and those old stalwarts that have been around for ages and rested on their laurels are now doing their best to reinvent themselves. Quite literally, one will eat or be eaten.

So as you can imagine, when I heard of a restaurant in San Ġwann called Caruso, I was certain it was an Italian job. I was much more surprised about the mention of San Ġwann. Somehow, I never asso­ciated San Ġwann with restaurants. To me, it is one of the culinarily challenged towns, bullied into submission by the adjacent St Julian’s, Sliema and Gżira that take the lion’s share of eateries.

Then I found out it is housed inside the San Ġwann band club. Not being a lifelong member of the club (yet), I had no idea where this was either. I just had to find out more, so I picked a victim by calling up the guy who’d told me about the place and asked whether he was up for lunch. The mention of Caruso made up his mind very quickly, so he told me to meet him across the road from the church.

Finding the place is that simple. The plain exterior of what looks like a brand new band club has an even simpler blackboard sign on top with ‘Caruso’ scrawled on it. So much for fanfare.

Inside, the space is a bit of a confused one. Simple tables, neat armchairs and simply laid tables suit the bistro name. The pool tables and a large, wooden bar also suit the premises. We picked a table and started looking around the place to figure out what we felt like eating.

The blackboard theme carries on inside. Two boards with wines were on the wall in front of us, adjacent to one with desserts on it. Another two on the walls behind us displayed the menu. Behind the bar, there is one for every day of the week with the day’s offer, another one on the bar with more special dishes, one above the bar with drinks and another couple with witty quotes on them for good measure.

Caruso’s smug smirk beams down on patrons from photos and caricatures that adorn the wall that hasn’t been treated to a blackboard, however there’s no opera playing in the background. Instead, our ears were dealt a dose of Michael Bublé doing pop-friendly renditions of crooner songs from yesteryear at a pleasant volume.

It turns out that the front of house is run by Italians and the chef is Maltese, so here we’re seeing a sensible collaboration between the two countries. The young lady who greeted us and helped us with our orders was great. She was friendly and knew exactly what was going on in the kitchen, making our deciding and order experience a highly informed and pleasant one.

As promised, the carbonara was the real deal

I happen to be quite particular about carbonara. When I spot bowdlerisation of this dish on a menu, I simply skip it. I’ve seen the addition of ham, mushrooms, onion, cream and even peas to this most simple and sacred of dishes. The menu here filled me with hope however, because it contained an equal measure of Maltese and Italian dishes that sounded simple and genuine, just like a good carbonara should be.

I said “Carbonara…”, allowing the word to trail like I wanted to know more, and the girl picked this up instantly. She smiled and said it was made simply with egg, guanciale and Parmeggiano.

Even though I’m with the pecorino camp on this one, I couldn’t pass this by. They are actually using guanciale, the cured pork cheek that is the cornerstone of this dish, so I just had to have it. My victim pondered and pondered and tried to decide between the gamberi e zucchini and the veal liver, finally choosing spaghetti with octopus. That’s one way out of a quandary.

While we waited, a lovely spread was served with a big smile. A white bean dip with fresh garlic in it, two kinds of excellent salami, fresh bread and galletti (water biscuits) made for an unexpected and delightful start to the meal.

Our pasta was very well presented in large bowls that have a deceptive indentation in their base. This makes the portion seem smaller than it actually is.

As promised, the carbonara was the real deal. Crisp and intense, the diced guanciale adds sparks of seasoning and salt to every forkful of al dente pasta. This rush of flavour oozes into the creaminess of warmed egg and grated Parmesan, showing that three ingredients are more than enough to turn a pasta dish into a legend.

After a few forkfuls I wanted to know more about the silence from across the table. The beard in front of me wobbled up and down happily, like a puppy wagging its tail, and I could see a smile hidden somewhere in there too. I asked about it and got that little air-stab with the fork that seems to be a universal gesture inviting one to dig in. I did dig in and was happy with the buried treasure this yielded.

The sauce was surprisingly savoury and rich, and the octopus was very tender. It is so rich that it has the fishy savouriness that would give oyster sauce a run for its money. The beard put it in a rather peculiar way. He said it was like Marmite, in the best sense of the word. He happens to adore the beautiful, brown, goo, as do I, so there was no insult going on. It was his way of saying salty, savoury and comforting.

We finished off with an espresso each and paid a tenner apiece for our lunch. It is one of those places where the location and decor are so unlikely that it takes surprisingly good food to get anyone to visit and talk about it afterwards.

It’s one of those restaurants where you’d start with a caveat, excusing the fact that you’re sending someone to a band club before saying the food will make the trip worth their while. And that’s what I’ll be doing. I’ll say there’s this cheeky place in San Ġwann that offers stocking pig cheeks in two guises (there was pork cheek on the main course menu), and that has gone to hide inside a band club. Make the effort, I’ll tell my ever-hungry friends, because the food will make up for the building it’s served in.

You can send e-mails about this column to ed.eatson@gmail.com or follow @edeats on Twitter.

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