Bella Italia

The restaurant & setting. The very first episode of Na Nože opens with Martin Novák in Šamorín, home to the pizzeria Bella Italia. It is an older family-run Italian and pizza place that has been running for about eight years and used to be packed before covid, with people booking tables in advance. The name came about simply, „Bela" means beautiful, so beautiful Italy. Today, though, the building looks run-down inside and out, and Martin immediately senses that the place has lost its soul.

The people. The owner is Tibor Daridan, Hungarian by origin, who fell in love with Italian cooking when he once worked for an Italian. He and his wife Henrietta (Heni) have been together for twenty-eight years and the whole family lives off the restaurant. The co-owner and best friend is Patrik (Paťo) Venčič, who is in charge of the pizza and openly shares his story of battling alcohol and of the faith on which he built his side of the pizzeria. In the kitchen Tibor cooks with his son Dávid, who has been pushing for change for two years. Out front there is waiter Kevin and other staff, with eight people on a single shift.

Why they called Martin. The restaurant is sliding into the red, it loses money on weekdays and weekends only claw back the loss, and payments are being deferred. Tibor admits they live month to month and risk closing. The core problem is a huge menu of a hundred and thirty-six dishes, a fusion of Slovak, American, Asian and Italian food under an Italian name, plus thirty-five kinds of pizza. Tibor needs help so the place does not have to shut down.

The first visit. Martin orders almost a full cross-section of the menu and one by one the dishes floor him. The bruschetta is hopelessly over-salted and inedible, the tomato soup is just paste and water with no flavour, and the „carbonara" is not carbonara at all, just creamy pasta with overcooked noodles and badly fried bacon. The legendary „Snow White's dream", a fried schnitzel with seven little potatoes, is a relic from the nineties that has no place in an Italian restaurant. An Italian hamburger with Slovak cheese and an „oriental sauté", which is merely chicken with lečo, finish him off. The one bright spot is the Diavola pizza, thin crust and a lovely aroma, with nothing to fault. „Finally something excellent after the horror I have been through here so far."

The diagnosis. Martin tells Tibor straight that the restaurant has no soul and no identity, it is just an empty name floating in the air. The root of the problem is that Tibor is stuck in nineteen ninety-three, cooking out of nostalgia and from his comfort zone, which he is afraid to leave. Meanwhile his son Dávid has level-headed, modern thinking, fewer dishes, higher quality and fresher, yet his father gives him no room. Martin also criticises the staff for sitting on their phones and taking advantage of Tibor's kindness, and he even witnesses the owner himself having to go out and deliver pizza because the drivers could not be bothered. The whole conversation cuts Tibor deeply, he is a good man living inside his own bubble.

The reset. First thing in the morning Martin runs a big inventory, has all the stock carried out onto the tables, and shows Tibor that he has roughly four thousand euros frozen in supplies, plenty of duplicates and goods past their use-by date. The menu has to be slimmed down and fresh ingredients turned over. Dávid finally gets his chance and cooks a porcini risotto with parmesan and a steak that hits Martin's taste exactly, and his father is proud of him. Martin sends father and son to a football match to spend time together, and takes them to Bratislava to the Italian family restaurant of his friend Kono, who cooks with his son and gives his children freedom, so Tibor can see how a father-son relationship in the kitchen should work. A new combi oven also arrives in the kitchen.

New concept & menu. The menu is cut from a hundred and thirty-six dishes to about thirty-seven, with Tibor's favourite old dishes kept in a separate Retro Bella Italia column of chef's specialities, while the new Italian dishes will be made by Dávid. Martin sets the prices so the restaurant finally makes money, and decorates the space with family photos, because an Italian family restaurant should be all about family. The new menu rests on honest Italian classics, a strong tomato soup, bruschetta with pear and gorgonzola, vitello tonnato from veal tenderloin, saltimbocca of veal loin in prosciutto with sage, carbonara done the Italian way, porcini risotto and the desserts panna cotta, profiteroles and tiramisu.

The big night. For the final dinner Martin invites the guests to test the new rules and whether the kitchen can take the pressure. The start is chaotic, dishes pile up in the kitchen, the waiters cannot keep up, the soup goes cold and the desserts melt, and Heni is so stressed she wants to go home because around sixty people arrived at once. Martin steps in, splits the waiters so that one takes orders, one carries food and one drinks, and reminds Tibor that a guest would rather wait five minutes longer for a perfect dish than get a bad one quickly. After the early mistakes they manage to pull it off, the guests leave happy, one diner gives the risotto ten out of ten, and Tibor and Dávid work as a team for the first time in ages.

One month later. The end of the episode is summed up by the narrator, since every restaurant gets three months from Martin to put the changes into practice. Word of Martin's visit spreads quickly through Šamorín, and after he leaves the restaurant is full almost every evening. Tibor invested in the kitchen and bought new equipment, Dávid became head chef, and Tibor himself now devotes more time to his wife and his dogs, though he occasionally comes in and makes himself a pizza. Dávid still wants to keep improving and is preparing for an internship with Martin. The menu has shrunk considerably and Italian dishes have been added. The legendary Snow White's dream survived on the menu, but Tibor and Dávid renamed it in Martin's honour to Martin's dream.

Verdict: The first season of Na Nože did not yet have the knife rating, so Martin awards no score and gives only a verbal assessment. It is clearly positive, and he rates the transformation as a success: a failing pizzeria with no identity turned into a working Italian family restaurant with a slimmed-down menu, fresh ingredients and better food. For Martin the biggest win is that Tibor himself changed, stepped out of his comfort zone, started trusting his son Dávid and gave him a free hand, which finally gives the place direction and a full house.