His name was Bond, just Bond. Today he has a restaurant named after him – well, not exactly after him, but his breed – Great Dane. The Great Dane is the main restaurant at the Mellieħa Holiday Centre, the tourist village owned by FolkeFerie.dk

Carol Calleja

Established in 1938 by the Danish trade union movement as its travel agency, FolkeFerie.dk opened the 150-unit tourist village in May 1979. In its 40-year history the Danish Village, as it’s popularly known, has been renovated several times.

The latest round of upgrades and renovations began last January when the focus of the works was the village’s food and beverage outlets.

These are operated and managed by local entrepreneur Carol Calleja’s Walsh Ltd, who leased the property’s bars and restaurants soon after the Danish Village opened.

The nucleus of this year’s refurbishment was the 200-cover Great Dane Restaurant and its al fresco barbecue terrace. Besides a new décor and more comfortable furnishings, a fresh menu has also been introduced with “new dishes which the chef continuously adjusts”.

The refurbishment, Calleja points out, was a joint venture between the holiday centre’s “proprietors and us, Walsh Ltd”.

But what of the Great Dane himself – Bond? Bond belonged to Calleja, who had bought the Winston Hotel in Sliema’s High Street in 1974.

The latest round of upgrades and renovations began last January

“I turned it into a restaurant soon after buying it,” says Calleja; and it quickly gained a reputation as one of the finer eateries on the islands.

Bond became the Winston’s unofficial mascot cum maître d’, he did not greet people as much as eye them when they entered the restaurant.

The Winston – named after its previous owner, Winston Carbone – was the first in a string of restaurants Calleja acquired: the better known were Hunters Tower in Marsaxlokk, the Bologna in Valletta, the Medina in Mdina and the Carriage in Sliema. In time he owned 10.

In the early 1980s, he sold most of his restaurants but retained the Winston, Medina and Hunters Tower, and moved to London with his family. There he bought three restaurants.

The UK sojourn came to an end in the mid-1990s when Calleja relocated back to Malta.

By this time, he had sold the Medina and Hunters Tower and the Winston “was not doing well”, one of the reasons was the “difficulty customers had in finding parking”. Inspired by the UK’s multi-storey car parks, Calleja decided to close the restaurant and build a car park on the site.

The result was Malta’s first multi-storey car park, “and it’s still doing very well”, he notes.

Now, with ample parking available, he opened a restaurant at the roof level of the car park.  “It was a total failure,” exclaims Calleja. “We closed it, added more floors and now rent them out as offices.”

Nowadays Calleja, 78, concentrates on the outlets he operates at the Mellieħa Holiday Centre. Aside from the revamped Great Dane – that offers both an à la carte menu and an all-inclusive buffet – he is also the lessee of the Winston Steak House, the Pizzeria, Noodles Bar and the Hansen Gastro Bar.

For those who remember Bond, his memory lives on at the Great Dane and those with a hankering for the ‘old’ Winston – try out the ‘new’ Winston version at the Danish Village.