Hello, hi, good morning, ciao, neataaa‚¬A¦

Let’s face it, if you are an English speaker, you would think twice about saying to a friend “let’s see each other in ‘Good Morning’”. It sounds daft. It is equally silly to a Romanian who says “hai, sa ne intalnim in ‘Neata’”. I have no doubt an Italian would feel equally uncomfortable asking to meet a friend in ‘Buongiorno’.

To put it another way, the name is plain silly. But if this is a mistake, it is the only mistake the House has made, because dining there was one of the most pleasant surprises I have encountered all year.

It is in a large graceful villa which over the last five years has seen several changes of ownership and at least four changes in its direction and persona as a restaurant. And this is because villa restaurant conversions do not work anymore. If proof be needed I defy you to find one thriving villa restaurant in town! No diners want a rabbit warren of dining rooms, upstairs, downstairs and around the corner.

What they want is an open-plan restaurant, with the buzz and excitement of happy diners chatting and shouting away (no music required) in an area where you can see and easily meet up with your friends – and maybe even catch a picture of an early scandal with a couple who should not be seen out in public together.

This is why only open-plan restaurants work, not only in Bucharest, but all over the world.
The House has cleverly overcome the ‘villa problem’ by extending the dining area into a new permanently constructed open-plan area which was formerly its terrace and car park. It worked perfectly.

Blondie and I arrived at lunchtime on an otherwise ‘dead’ Tuesday, to find the place packed. The clientele were basically 30-ish and well dressed. It was apparent that every one of them could afford a car, but as parking is almost impossible most of them would have been forced to choose an alternative form of transport, and yet it was still full.

We were promptly seated and given a menu which boasted 200 dishes. I would normally be rightfully skeptical about such a claim, but given that this place is an up-market pizzeria, for once I believe that 200 dishes are possible. For instance, if you take a basic pizza, all you have to do is add or omit one topping to describe two different pizzas on the menu. Hence it doesn’t take too much imagination to stretch this point into making 20-30 ‘different’ pizzas.

Suffice it to say that all of the usual pizzas that you know so well are available. It is difficult to make a bad pizza, but in the face of this insurmountable obstacle, so many Bucharest restaurants have studied the questionable art of destroying a pizza – and they have succeeded. Buongiorno on the other hand, has got it right!

To make a perfect pizza, all you need is flour, water, salt and a fraction of oil to make pizza dough which you spin out until it is razor thin. You then bake it in a smoky wood-fired oven with fresh toppings. It is so, so simple. So we ordered the House pizza of tomato sauce, mozzarella, chicken, chorizo, mushrooms and pepper. And the price: RON 16. Beat that! The average price of other pizzas rose to around RON 25, but still good value.
But I want to move on from pizzas as this House has much more to offer.

We passed on their two-course business lunch at RON 20, and went straight for their mains. I chose a ‘pork fillet in Marsala sauce’ at a reasonable RON 26. Marsala is a sweet, red, fortified Italian aperitif which went out of fashion in the 1960s. Since then it has been used to sex up mushroom-based Italian sauces. With a perfect pork fillet, my sauce was generously laced with Marsala but the kitchen screwed up by adding flour as a thickener (correct) which appeared as hundreds of tiny white lumps in my brown sauce (incorrect).

It is a simple mistake to make, but so few chefs know how to correct it. All you have to do is thin the sauce out with water, wine or stock and then furiously boil it, and all the lumps disappear!
We also passed on their grill section which offered generously sized portions, all reasonably priced between RON 18-25. So there was chicken served every way, either as breast, legs, schnitzel, with chili or with Gorgonzola.

Blondie chose ‘chicken Corsica’, chicken breast fried with mushrooms, garlic, tomato and peperoncino (sweet Tuscan peppers) at RON 24. This is so simple to make that there is not much I can say, other than it was fresh, tender and the dish honestly adhered to its description on the menu.

I ordered a ‘sliced sirloin, fried with fresh rosemary, basil, thyme and oregano’. I thought it was a bit overpriced at RON 56, especially in comparison with the rest of the menu. But there was no fresh oregano, and this ruined the dish for me. A further look at the menu revealed a profusion of dishes here, there and everywhere all claiming to include oregano. It is an essential Italian herb, and if the House did not have it, they should cancel them!

We were too full to sample their 17 pasta dishes, including; seafood, carbonara, pesto, Milanese, al Arrabiata – come on people, you know what they are so they merit no further description. They were fairly priced an average charge of RON 23.
But for me, their crowning glory was their simple but effective desserts, all priced from RON 10-12.
For chocoholics there was a first class choco fondu, choco cake and crepes with choco ice cream. Blondie passed on chocolate and ordered an excellent warm apple strudel with a superb vanilla ice cream in a sweet pastry bowl. It was worth every penny of a RON 10 dessert.

michaelbarclay32@gmail.com

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