Croce di Malta: the real taste of Parma

A man I've never met has written me a 3,000 word email. It's a love letter to what he feels has been lost from the "Food Valley" around the northern Italian town of Parma. Why? Days earlier I had sent a text to Seamus Sheridan to find out if he knew anyone in Parma. "You want contacts? Ex-Sheridans and owner of the best little bar in Italy! And loves rugby," Seamus texts back exuberantly with Diego Sorba's number.

My king of contacts worked in Sheridan's Kirwans Lane shop in Galway in 2001. But he is out of town, leaving his lovely wine bar, Tabarro, in the hands of his barmen, Luca and Andrea. So Diego sends me his treatise on food in Parma. I picture lots of hand gesturing as he typed. In answer to the questions he has questions of his own. Why are there are hardly any cows grazing in the fields in the land of the "king of cheeses", he asks. The answer is they're housed indoors. Very few pig farms either. "And this is the land of the king of hams, isn't it?" Parma has lost its food market, he says, but for a few stalls. And unlike neighbouring Modena where Massimo Bottura runs the world's third-best restaurant, Parma doesn't have a charismatic chef to act as the fulcrum for its food culture.

It should be no surprise that industrial food is cheek by jowl with small producers in this beautiful part of the food world as it is elsewhere. In the last couple of days we’ve seen both up close. And Diego’s favourite restaurants? “These are my tips to eat out in town. Do not expect to ‘eat light’ as we do not know how to do it. This side of the Appennines we use butter, not extra-virgin oil.”

Thanks to Diego’s list we are in a tiny square off a side street in the old centre of Parma. The heat of the day is beating off the stones and swallows screech above our heads. Inside Restaurant Croce di Malta it’s a high, beamed ceiling with a floor tiled in old chequerboard tiles and simple wooden tables and chairs. However we are outside on this bone-warming night.

The menu is a one-pager of typical Italian pace: antipasti followed by first and second courses. It’s translated by the friendly waitress. Ask any Italian what great Italian food is and they will use the word “simple”. But there is a complicated logic to simplicity. Spaghetti Bolognaise doesn’t exist in Italy because Italians would never use a pasta as thin and slippery as spaghetti to hold on to something as precious as a meat sauce.

The first four of the antipasti are different pieces of cured pig, a 30-month-old prosciutto, a salami, some culatello (a smaller cut of the leg) and a mortadella. But I’ve eaten enough pig in the past day to grow a curly tail, so I read on.

The bagnetto rosso sauce on the anchovies is worth the €10 cost alone. It’s got that “why can’t tomato sauce taste like this at home?” rightness. Kathleen gets the tortino di melanzane, or aubergine tart, which uses the meaty flesh of this purple vegetable as the pastry. This restaurant is the first one where her vegetarianism hasn’t caused a double take.

Her gnocchi is served with a basil pesto described as leggero or light. The result is a bowl of gnocchi fluffy rather than leaden, dressed with salad leaves and tomatoes. My carpaccio of wild salmon is a mound of cured pink flesh surrounded by mandolined courgette sliced so thin you can see the plate through the pale green petals which are fanned out like fish scales. They've been drizzled with olive oil that has spent a long productive time with basil leaves.

Two slices of the peach tart, which is more cake than tart, round off a great evening. Croce di Malta is not cheap. It’s grandma’s cooking , only grandma’s got herself a mandolin and wants to serve big tastes rather than stuff you silly.

When you travel it’s wonderful to feel you have tasted a place. Here we have. Dinner for two with a €5 cover charge and a bottle of Verdicchio came to €90.

THE VERDICT: 8/10 A friendly neighbourhood feel and terrific flavours

Croce di Malta, Borgo Palmia 8, Parma, Italy. Tel:+39 521-208681

Facilities: Fine

Music: The screech of swallows

Food provenance: None

Wheelchair access: Yes

Vegetarian options: Good

Second helping . . .

A former Michelin-starred chef who is now doing “bistronomie” was the promise at Borgo 20 Bistrot, where we grabbed a quick lunch along with the chic office workers of Parma.

It’s a beautiful restaurant with a window opening on to a tiny street tucked in behind Parma’s medieval baptistry.

I had a plate of meaty chunks of raw seabass with salad and a lemon-drenched olive oil.

The second dish of mozzarella cheese turned into strips of “tagliatelle” draped over aubergine was a delight, with a finger-licking basil and tomato sauce.

A side salad with enough vegetables to give us 10-a-day, and mineral water, brought an excellent lunch to €25.

They do “amazing” pizzas, we’re told. The house speciality is topped with horse meat.

Borgo 20 Bistrot, 14/16 Borgo XX Marzo, 43121 Parma, Italy