Less is amore for real taste of Italy
Unfussy plates allow the food to sing at Eusebi
During the many enforced marches of lockdown, I often passed Eusebi on the corner of Glasgow’s Gibson Street and Park Road.
Masked folk would leap from double parked cars, run in and emerge seconds later, cradling red carrier bags and precious boxes.
Their joy was understandable. Unlike many restaurants that pivoted to deliveries and takeaways, Eusebi’s food came ready to eat. No tiny tubs of crumbs. No vacuum packs of unmarked beige matter that could be the artichoke puree or the crème patissiere.
Yes, I did get them mixed up. No, it was not funny at the time.
Somehow I never managed to order a tray of rich lasagne or care package of handmade pasta and I still regret this oversight.
So when somewhere new and flaky let us down and I found myself stomping home towards an empty fridge with a tetchy Carb Boy, I saw my chance. We diverted straight towards Gibson Street. It was 5pm on a Sunday night and we got the second last table in the house.
Eusebi’s autumn menu is a thing of beauty with an Andy Warhol illustration of pasta on the front and my favourite things to eat at this time of year on the back. Octopus. Squash. Aubergines. I could have made my choices with a pin and still been happy.
Figs and cheese appear as both starter and pizza topping. I swithered but decided to have this iconic duo undiluted by dough. My two plumptious figs were quartered and sprinkled with ground pistachios. They oozed gorgonzola on to a base of white beans.
A garland of charred spring onions brought the chew and a toasty note to this excellent dish. Serving it on a bland bean instead of bread or even a pizza base gently diluted the blue cheese without dispersing its raspingly metallic charms. I loved it.
Carb Boy was just as delighted with his wild boar meatballs. And
with good reason. Wild boar is like a less lean venison and makes a very pleasing, loose-textured sphere of meatiness. This was further elevated by an excellent tomato sauce, tart with the flavour that comes from growing in a sunny climate, rounded out with autumnal rosemary and thyme rather than summery basil.
There was more tomato-based joy on his Calabrese pizza. Eusebi favour the Roman style, with a base so thin it resembles a matzo cracker. Its heart-shaped beauty was too large for a plate – it arrived on a sheet of branded greaseproof paper.
The topping had so much punchy Calabrian salami that it was folded into curls, with handtorn blobs of burrata tucked in between. A few shards of parsley were all that was required to make this pizza that looked as good as it tasted.
This is rare praise for a foodstuff that rarely wins the dinner table beauty pageant. Not that Carb Boy noticed its visual appeal. He was too busy getting stuck in.
My braised ox cheek was the perfect dark, melty meat for a grey day. As passers-by navigated Gibson Street with hoods and umbrellas up, I relished every dank, mushroom-scented mouthful. A few foraged fungi, more white beans and a hidden bed of caramelised onion mush – that’s a technical cookery term – were all the extra elements it required. It was not as pretty as the pizza. In fact, it looked a bit like a dumpling on the verge of collapse. But I respect the kitchen’s confidence in sending it out like that. The day Eusebi starts putting edible flowers on their main courses will be the date of my last visit.
There are tempting Italian sweets on the menu and cakes, including their famous strawberry tarts, in a chiller cabinet. I handed the choice over to Carb Boy, who picked lemon meringue pie. It is, in a closely contested field, his favourite dessert.
The Eusebi version was a minimalist masterpiece. It’s a double decker arrangement, a pastry case topped with a much higher storey of Italian meringue with a burnished swirl on top. The topping was blowtorched rather than baked, which created cloudy marshmallowness rather than chewy or even dusty meringue.
It was basically a classic Italian lemon tart – shortcrust pastry, tart lemon curd – with a huge bouffant pillow on top.
It took Carb Boy straight to his happy place for the rest of the evening.
This was such a good meal, served with huge smiles and zero fuss. It underlined why Eusebi is so many Glaswegians’ go-to restaurant and treasured treat in the dark days of lockdown.
It knows its own strengths, plays to them with quiet confidence and allows the excellent food to sing on an unfussy plate.