For a story to be a good one, there is a simple rule. It goes: ‘All is not as it seems’. If everything is exactly as it appears, where’s the twist in the tale?
After all, we’re little more than monkeys that can persuade each other via the power of story. Think of the way you’re being manipulated as you read this sentence. You want to know why you’re being manipulated so you’ll read on. Still with me?
If by the end of this story there’s something about the restaurant that piques your interest, you’ll consider paying it a visit. And if you do, from monkey to monkey, I congratulate you. I’d have used my simian appendages to write a story that persuaded you to taste an excellent pizza. And just like that I’ve ruined the punchline.
But all is not as it seems. I was told, quite a while ago, that there was an excellent pizzeria in Ħamrun that’s called Pulcinella. It registered for a moment and then slipped into one of those memory nooks that needs a jolt if it is ever going to see the light of day.
My relationship with Ħamrun is based purely on food. The festa was fun, I must say, but that comes around once a year. In Ħamrun, I get to eat the wonderful fares of Afghan natural, falafel from a little place called Baba Ghanoush, and zebra or crocodile burgers from The Journey. There’s the Bandit, too, if you like burgers that are made by someone who never intends to actually eat one – they’re very tasty but they fall apart before you can get through a third of them so you’re juggling a terrible experience with an explosion of flavour.
There’s plenty more than I’ve mentioned and it’s all worth unearthing. What I never do is leave the comfort of my cave in the evenings and drive there. I think of Ħamrun as a place I go to for lunch. But recently I needed a pizza. At the peril of sounding like a kid who doesn’t know the difference between ‘need’ and ‘want’ and used them interchangeably, I actually vocalised my need for pizza.
Out of the nook, or was it a cranny, the name Pulcinella came hurtling and off to Ħamrun we’re going, I told the bewildered better half. I had a vague idea of the location and drove past the place. I was somehow prepared for a tiny pizzeria, possibly a take-out with a couple of tables, but the restaurant looked pretty large. So I circled the next block and was surprised to find a public car park that’s run by the local council. That’s easy. Thanks, council members.
Pulcinella used to be one of the large cafes on the high street and little has been done to the decor other than adding a large pizza oven, bang in the centre of the front half of the place. There’s a large bar, a vast dining area, glass-walled showcases all around, polished wood, brass-plating, and in general the feeling that you’ve walked into the cafe from the set of a nineties soap opera.
It’s evident that whoever is running the place simply took over one of the cafes that had depressed the last of its patrons, installed a pizza oven, and started to operate immediately. The smell from the pizza oven, however, is wonderful enough to take over most of your senses. It pervades your body, seeping through and blinding you to the garish visuals. It almost numbs your ears until you can’t hear the Italian music that, to my untrained ear, sounds like “amore mio, amore mio” for hours on end.
Thus entranced, we were guided to a table by a very pleasant young lady. She must be running the front of house because she was efficient, had a handle on everything that was going on in the kitchen and pizza area, and simply glided through the entire evening with a pleasant efficiency that would be the dream of many restaurants with fine-dining aspirations.
I looked towards where I imagined Naples to be on the map and lowered my head in reverence
She described the specialities of that evening like she’d cooked them herself, knowing enough about the food to answer any queries we had. She was, in fact, the first of the surprises that evening. Somehow, the location and decor had me prepared for service that was more rough around the edges and she was anything but.
I was about to dig into the menus when the second surprise of the evening, thus far hidden in plain sight, caught my eyes. There was a beer menu by Mikkeller, one of my favourite breweries, casually hanging out on the table in front of me. I peered around until I spotted the beer fridge. There’s Brewdog in there, too! I use exclamation marks sparingly but in this case, spotting beers by the Scottish brewers, I feel it is warranted. What is this place, I asked myself.
The specialities for the evening sounded enticing but I glazed over when our host said there was pizza with cotechino. I’d expected there to be nduja on the menu, and there was, but cotechino? It sounded too good to be true. My mind was made up. The better half went with the calzone and I settled in with a Danish IPA, smiling like a Cheshire cat that knows your keys are behind the couch.
Neapolitan pizza is one of those recipes that’s strictly controlled. Cook it for longer than 90 seconds and forget adding DOP to its name if you’re lucky enough to be cooking it in Naples. This is adhered to at Pulcinella. The pizza was served remarkably quickly and has that beautiful sourdough base that remains perfectly elastic, very tender, and rich with the scent of a very high temperature oven.
The soft, spiced, perfectly salted cotechino had leaked some of its goodness into a rather lively tomato sauce and the mozzarella had just about melted into circles of stringy unctuousness. I looked towards where I imagined Naples to be on the map and lowered my head in reverence.
The classic calzone, formed a little unusually into a narrow crescent shape, enjoyed the same wonderful base and was filled with tomato sauce and mozzarella. I’d been eating a significantly more seasoned sauce so the first bite of my trial felt like it lacked salt. Some time and some beer was all it took to give my palate a break and this is where the ability of Pulcinella shines. Eating the most basic of pizza is where one can assess competence and they have it in spades.
We paid just over a tenner each, including a premium beer and a couple of glasses of wine, and hopped to the car park with an unreasonable satisfaction, planning to return soon.
We skipped a day, not to appear too eager, and returned with the nephews. Telling two boys who are hitting their teens that we’re going to eat pizza brings out the rebel in them so one ordered the fresh tuna steak from the day’s specialities and the other ordered a salad.
Unsurprisingly, the salad was uninspired. The tuna steak, however, was really quite lovely. It was cooked medium rare, as the young champion had ordered it, and he loved every bite except the one I stole for him. That’s the bite I got to enjoy.
This time I ordered the boscaiola and it is where, I suspected, the Malta factor happened to the place. The base was just as good as the first time but the base was laden with a little too much chopped mushroom. This far from Naples, you’re bound to have a market that complains if the pizza isn’t weighed down with toppings so I can’t blame the pizzaiolo for capitulating. I thoroughly enjoyed the pizza nonetheless.
This time, we still paid a smidge over a tenner per person. And since I wasn’t driving, I’d had another of the premium beers from their selection.
All was not as it seemed at Pulcinella and, if you’re fine with a story persuading you to taste a pizza that’s up there with the best, I suggest you do so, washed down with a beer you might not be used to. We might be manipulating monkeys but we’re infinitely better off with pizza inside us after all.