Karl Stennienibarra
A delicious al dente deluge hit the streets of Valletta this afternoon, after the number of Italian restaurants in the capital exceeded its critical mass.
Experts have been warning for some time that Valletta’s infrastructure was not designed to handle the almost-daily opening of a new Italian eatery.
However, their warnings continued to go unheeded, and the opening of a trattoria called Scherzo on South Street last Saturday appears to have been the spaghetti strand that broke the camel’s back.
At 2 pm, eye witnesses reported seeing a small but steady trickle of Bucatini all’Amatriciana coming out of Scherzo’s entrance.
By 3pm, the trickle had turned into a veritable torrent of pasta and tomato sauce that completely engulfed the street.
The overflow at Scherzo triggered a chain reaction, with traditional pasta dishes of various kinds pouring out of every charming side street and into the main thoroughfares of Republic Street and Merchants Street.
Across the city, people could be seen wading through linguine, rigatoni and fusilli, desperately sprinkling parmesan and grinding pepper onto the floodpasta as they ate their way through.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before. What with all these Italians coming over, there were bound to be consequences,” said 54-year-old Archbishop Street resident Karmenu Bonnici, as he scooped up the Vermicelli alla Puttanesca that threatened to inundate his home.
“I mean don’t get me wrong, this is much tastier than the fish flood they had in Xemxija,” said his lifelong neighbour Mary Zammit, who trudged past with a wheelbarrow full of Pesto alla Genovese. “But what if it gets worse and pizza starts falling from the sky and we’re hit by a tsunami of tiramisu?”
“A tiramitsunami!” she exclaimed.
“When the Knights built the city in the 16th century, they planned for a wide variety of cuisines aside from Italian, such as Indian and Thai, as well as a Greek restaurant that wasn’t closed for half the bloody year,” claimed local historian Paul Vella while wiping bechamel sauce from his mouth.
“I don’t want to imagine what will happen if more craft beer places start popping up as well.”
No fatalities have been reported as a result of the pasta catastrophe, although several people suffering from heartburn had to be treated with Fernet-Branca.
Meanwhile, a Sicilian restaurateur was grievously injured by a Roman compatriot, after the latter found out the former had been using pancetta instead of guancale in his Carbonara.
“He’s lucky I didn’t catch him putting pineapple on pizza,” the Roman said as he was led away by the police.
The Times of Malta’s Ed Eats column gave the Pastapocalypse a rating of three stars out of five, citing the slow service and limited wine list for the mediocre score.
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