The news that Elia Borg Bonaci had died was something of a Cinema Paradiso moment to me. Not that I knew him – the few times we spoke, I was one of many customers and he was behind the counter.
Elia was always there, a bishop in his baroque cathedral of almonds and chocolate. Now that he’s gone, I know I’d had been a happier man among his more regular flock.
In one of her delightful remembrances of Valletta past, Ramona Depares describes the moment she first tasted Caffè Cordina’s diplomatica.
Somewhat intimidated by the gilt of Malta’s answer to Caffè Greco, it took the efforts of her grandfather and a friendly waiter to give her the courage to ask for one.
It wouldn’t do to name-drop Proust in a newspaper column. Nor does Depares do so in her refreshingly unpretentious book. But the sense is very much there that the taste of diplomatica, her childhood in Valletta, and memories of her grandfather will always be as deliciously layered as the pastry itself.
He will forgive me if I’m wrong, but was it Alfred Sant who once told us that if we joined the EU, we would be swamped with Sicilian pasticcerie? What I do know for sure is that it clinched it for me: I knew right then that I would be outside the polling place at first light to vote for full-fat membership.
The original is always the best... Thing is, however, that taste is not mathematics- Mark Anthony Falzon
And yet, it was partnership we got. Take kannoli, an import from Sicily well before Brussels was a rumble in the tummy. It wasn’t just a consonant that was lost, or maybe gained, in translation. Maltese kannoli are similar and yet completely different to their Sicilian ancestors: they’re somehow earthier, and less colourful and playful.
Sant is nothing if not a logical man. I can see why he reckoned that kannoli would be no competition for cannoli – the original is always the best, Sicilian candied fruit is edible jewellery, and so on. Thing is, however, that taste is not mathematics. There are days when only a blokey kannol will do. Which is why the EU hasn’t killed Busy Bee. On the contrary, it has made it stronger.
Balluta has a new vocation as the Sicilian dolci embassy in Malta. There are pasticcerie all over the country, to be sure, but the ones in Balluta enjoy the double privilege of having been the first in a busy location.
The place they remind me of is not Elia, or Busy Bee, or Cordina, but rather Blackley’s. Now a cosmetics shop, many readers will remember Blackley’s cream buns as fondly as Depares her diplomatica. The reason behind my association is that Blackley’s, like today’s Sicilians, was prescriptively an enclave. Blackley’s was a dollop of England and its exotic cream teas.
At the other end of Strada Reale (or was it Kingsway?), Caffè Cordina was something else altogether. It was (is, to some degree) the sweetest bastion of old-time italianità in Valletta. It was also part of a local culture that, even as it happily fads on cream buns and minne di Sant’Agata, deep down keeps wanting a certain kind of kannoli.
Like Depares, I was brought up within that bastion. It’s hard to believe that, up until the nineties, Valletta was the only place you could get ħelu (confectionery) that wasn’t just lamingtons or variations on a rusk. Elia and Busy Bee were among the few exceptions that did nothing to the rule, and even worldly Sliema had to do with one or two pale imitations.
It was the age of pasti: ‘cakes’, unjustly translated. People would buy little boxes of pasti in Valletta to take home as a treat. To those of us who grew up there, pasti were part of the Sunday liturgy. The ultimate upgrade was a cassata-not-quite-siciliana from Rubino’s. Torta tal-lewż was cake aristocracy and usually given as a gift.
Cordina was the place you went to if you really wanted to make an impression, but there were a hundred other places for a hundred budgets.
Up there with Cordina, in quality if not price, were the many branches of the Bonaci clan. So closely was the surname associated with ħelu, its very mention was positively Pavlovian. There were the Briffas, too, and the Camilleris and Mannarinos and Cacciattolos and Neriku and many more.
While not quite the baba au rhum or diplomatica or Roma of the Cordinas and Bonacis, pan di spagna (sponge cake) and Swiss roll (‘roly-poly’ in the Mediterranean Switzerland) kept us going in times of austerity. We were, quite literally, children in one gigantic sweet shop.
Many dolcerie were also cafés. I remember one on Strada Tesoreria, a Bonaci I think, that had a wonderful neo-classical stucco ceiling. The place is now a clothes shop, but the most intricate of fabrics cannot replicate the combined smell of pasti and almond dolci and coffee and pastizzi (the last of the round kind, another urban speciality at the time).
This is exactly the undiluted experience that Elia presided over in his Ħamrun dolceria and café. It still looks and tastes and smells wonderfully eighties. Whether or not it gives way to other things, time will tell.
Meanwhile, Elia will carry on purveying his nectar to the gods. Spoilt for choice as they are, they can’t possibly be immune to an old-school Maltese pasta or kannol.