Long before I arrived on the scene, Sophie’s mother insisted on the family taking a DNA test to see their ancestry, a kind of Who Do You Think You Are for a family of immaculately dressed, slightly absurd people from Bromsgrove. Sophie’s results came back a little Irish, a little scandi, and a fair bit Italian, which is hardly surprising given that when we holiday on a tiny Aeolian island a full days travel from home, she was the one the locals were talking to in Italian (as an aside, I have never been more embarrassed than an old Italian lady asking me – in English, I’ll note – “are you alright?” like I was having a stroke after conversing in a shop with her in Italian). Being the family they are, and I mean this in the most genuine, loving way possible, they looked further into the Italian side of the family, tracking it down to Tuscany, then Lucca to be more specific, where they believed that offsprings of the family were running a coffee operation. Cut a long story short, they went looking for it – of course they did – and they found it. Not before spending a day walking around the beautiful walled city failing to find it. Not before they gave up and decided to go back to Florence. It was in the train station, the perfect spot for a family of nomads. Unsurprisingly, none of the family was working there. I can only imagine the scenes when the thickly brummie tones of Linda was asking about her distant relations to a barista who had just been paid to make a few robusta.
I mention this because our booth at the back of Carlotta was under the gaze of some pictures from Lucca. In fact all of the walls are tributes to family members in various locations back home. Some of elderly parents at celebrations, others are holidays, all are loved ones missed, remembered, or both. It fits with the theme of this Big Mamma restaurant being an ode to the restaurants of Little Italy in NYC, where an influx of immigrants arrived in the mid-nineteenth century to Manhattan’s Lower East Side after leaving their loved ones an entire ocean away. A move that formed a new cuisine which galvanised the heart of Italian cooking with the robust no-bullshit New Yorker style. Pizzas got bigger, and somewhat more importantly, for the first time in many of their lives, they had access to meats, cheeses, and eggs. Dishes got heartier, more fattening, more garlicky. Many of the versions we know and understand now to be Italian are versions of dishes that sprung-up from those tenements and subsequent restaurants. Look no further than what we know as lasagne for an example.
I get a negroni. An excellent negroni that I ask them to thank the bar for. Then a glass of amarone from the coravin selection which they cart around and I fail to resist. Some fat olives and then the starters. Sophie has been eyeing up the menu for ages because that is what Sophie does, and orders the big shrimp cocktail whilst I have been eating all day in the name of work and take a simple dish of fennel, orange, and mozzarella which is fresh and light and everything it needs to be. The big shrimp cocktail is huge (spoiler alert; everything here is huge), full of massive tempura shrimp in a rose marie sauce that was the whiff of cognac away from being perfect. I have a Barollo from the trolley and wonder how quickly the quiet Tuesday dinner in London is spiralling out of control.
I’d admitted defeat on the main the second it showed up. A huge bowl of pasta with four meatballs the size of squash balls loitering underneath a tomato sauce that has been dialled-up. Most sauces only reach ten. This one goes up to eleven. The meatballs are a blend of ‘nduja and salami, meaty and spicy and so very good. I almost want them on a sub so they can exist in their own space with the sauce and a little cheese, but this is a proper bowl of pasta. Sophie gets the vodka crab, another massive plate of short pasta with crab meat and clams bound in a sauce with a generous glug of vodka that she loves unconditionally. They offer bread. We have no room for bread. They suggest more wine. We do as we are told. We share the giant creme brulee that excels for one key reason; everyone knows the best bit of a brulee is cracking through the top; well by stretching it out, just like the Americans did to pizza, you end up with a bigger surface area of the good stuff and a couple of centimetres of the softer stuff before you hit the base of the dish.
I’m constantly asked in Birmingham why I have so much love for La Bellazza. Some are sceptical, others are curious, some dismissive. Truth is I think the ingredients are exceptional, the cooking of a good standard, and the service impeccable. There is something to be said for old school hospitality, and the older I get the more I like being pampered. Having people remember my name and my favourite drinks when eventually I’ll probably forget both. Big Mamma has shown that old school hospitality is alive and well in non-Michelin areas and Carlotta is no different. From the second we come through the door they know us from our bookings in Birmingham, and they show a level of attention better than many of the starred places I have been to in the last couple of years. Arguably more impressive is how this is communicated throughout the team. When we arrive I tell them that the train dictates we have one-hour-thirty-five before we have to leave, and they get all of this plus a restaurant tour done with two minutes to spare. They literally do not miss a beat. I’m back in April with two mates, best table in the house at the back of the room, under the shadow of that poster from Lucca. That is how much I enjoyed Carlotta.
9/10
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