Malocchio

Italian (small plates), 159 Ingram St, Glasgow G1 1DW

£44.50 for two starters and three small plates

We are approaching this review with some context. One of us grew up in the Mediterranean, and we cook a lot of Italian food at home, so our expectations around Italian cooking are naturally quite specific. With that in mind, while others may enjoy Malocchio, it was not a restaurant that worked for us, and we do not see ourselves returning.

The menu is built around small plates inspired by Italian dishes, with a strong emphasis on sharing pastas and pizzette. In practice, we found the offering quite limited. There was a lack of balance across the menu, particularly in fresh vegetables and contrasting flavours, and we found it difficult to order in a way that felt cohesive.

We started with the olives, which were fine in terms of quality, though they were oddly salted on top. We then tried the focaccia, which was disappointing. It felt stale on the outside, as though it had been toasted and dipped in oil, and despite the menu mentioning rosemary, we could not taste or see any.

The vodka pasta was one of the better dishes of the evening. The sauce was rich and layered, and the pasta itself was cooked al dente. Basil enjoyed it, while for me it was just fine rather than memorable. The carbonara, however, was a real let-down. The staff described it as a reinvented version, but it lacked the flavours you would normally expect from the dish. The pasta was extremely thin, more like silk handkerchiefs, and it did not hold the sauce well. I stopped eating it after only a few bites.

We also tried the pizzette with camembert, walnuts, and honey. While the combination sounded promising, the dish itself felt underdeveloped. It was essentially pizza dough topped with the listed ingredients, but it needed far more walnuts and honey to work.

Overall, if you are looking for authentic Italian food or a particularly high standard of Italian cooking, Malocchio may not be the right choice. Unless the menu changes significantly, it is not somewhere we would return to, nor would we recommend it to others.

We did let the staff know that we did not enjoy the meal and described it as just ok. They offered a 25 per cent discount, but we were then told that we should have ordered differently, which did little to change our overall impression.