Da Mara (Cardiff, UK)

I looked over my shoulder and there he was - RPOT. Feared by all of us. Unstoppable, seemingly faster every time he comes and impossible to hide away from. I screamed "NOO! Not yet!" but he only laughed and in the characteristically deep voice countered: "you forgot about something". What? What IS IT? TELL ME! Finally, he broke the silence: "The time difference" . Muhahahah... And then he struck me, hitting me right in my chest, his spell penetrating my whole body and I felt it straight away - I was one year older.

The Ruthless Passage of Time (RPOT) came once again to visit me on my birthday on 10t of August, 2018. I called my mum asking when is it exactly actually, that I become one year older and found out this was close to midnight, but still on 10th of August. Being in UK at that time, this meant I was to reach my 29th year of life just before 11pm.

I once heard that being 21 is as good as it can get, after which things go downhill. Put in a different way, until you're 21, you're celebrating with "HELL YEAH! I'm getting one year older!" whereas after you reach 21 you're more likely to celebrate with "HELL, I'm getting one year older!" until finally you reach the "HELL"-only stage. When exactly that happens, I don't have the statistics for, but I'll let you know when I find out. Sharing these deep thoughts with my father, I was comforted to find out, that, apparently, people only get mentally mature as they reach their 29th year. Needless to say, right after he told me that, I felt a strong sense of calm and mental maturity I've never felt before. And that - ladies and gents - surely cannot be a coincidence!

To help me face the ruthless passage of time, I blew the horn of Gondor and herded my UK friends for a pizza hunt to a place I've wanted to visit for years, basically since I came to UK. No, it is not Mordor, although quite likely the special wood-fired ovens of this place, brought in from Italy produce enough heat to destroy The Ring. But no. This was Da Mara, a restaurant recommended to me by someone - and as much as I search my memory, I cannot remember who that someone was. Quite likely it might have been one of those situations when you're in a crowd of people where suddenly, a dark stranger, face shadowed by hood over his head, ominously whispers into your ear "daa maaarrraa... da maarraaaa...", planting a seed of thought in your subconscious mind and disappearing into the darkness and rain before you get a chance to turn around, never to be seen again yet ... (yes, I watched Lord of the rings recently)

Also through the grapevine (or from that mysterious person), I recall something around Da Mara being on the list of "top 50 pizzerias you should try before you die". Hm! That was 3 years ago and no amount of googling got me the desired result (although we did find a bunch of other top-50 lists, mainly in UK, where Da Mara featured at relatively high places). Never mind, because soon the only chart that will matter will be the one from my Pizza Quest. Mu ha ha! (and now I sound like the Ruthless passage of time...).

Finally, I recall someone saying that the owner of this place used to work in the insurance business. One day he got fed up with it, dramatically shut down the laptop and proclaimed "to hell with this, I will make pizzas" and opened up his own successful pizzeria. OK, the story is quite hazy in my memory and I might have added a few details as to how I would have liked it to happen. But it's still quite nice to imagine, as you munch on the pizza, that it's a product of ditching the insurance industry for someone's passion. I asked the waitress about this person, but no one like that was there on the night. Hmm.

We gathered in Da Mara around 7pm and once everybody had arrived, we dived straight into the orders. A joyful Italian lady was serving our table of 12 and Lenka, who was visiting from Barcelona, used the opportunity to practice her Italian. I have to admit, that our long-standing competition of who speaks better foreign languages seems to have a winner and Lenka can start to compete with Google translate. In fact, sometimes I suspect Lenka IS Google translate. You never know, she's often on her phone and typing something at a fast tempo of 13149 characters per minute.

Anyway, we made our orders. I went with a traditional combination of parma ham, rocket and parmeggiano, something I always enjoyed in Real Italian Pizza Company and was keen to commpare the two. As a side note, RIPC is, at the time of this writing, at the first place amongst the pizzerias on Trip Advisor. Da Mara is third, and thus the two are quite tight competitors and I had to go undercover with the name "Gregorij Pavlovskij" and Ukrajinian accent.

Just kidding. The pizzas came in rounds of 2 or 3 and looked splendid, which is probably why I failed to make everyone wait for a common group picture with the food untouched - a sacred pizza hunting rule, breaking of which results in heavy thunderstorms on 99th Friday since the incident (just wait Dan and Martin!) . Anyway, I gave in too eventually and soon everyone was merrily munching on the lovely and colorful pizzas.

My first impression was good, but not overwhelming. And first impression is first impression, thus the rest of the review will go along the same lines. I found the dough nice and well baked, but not impressive, the sauce sweet and tomatoish, but lacking little more poignant and spicy flavour. And somehow, the Parma-rocket combo was a bit less exciting than usual. If I were to put it in the words of the ordinary people, I think I just lacked some more salt. But a disclaimer should be used here: I did not pay that much attention to the pizza analysis as I normally do and forgot to take notes. So I am only using my several week old memories where details are already hazy. One thing that remains clear though is that I did expect a tiny bit more.

Say "pizzaaa"

Please don't get me wrong though - Da Mara is, by any standard, an excellent pizzeria with really high quality pies. Some of my feedback can be simply attributed to personal style and some to overselling by that mysterious fellow. Thus do not take Da Mara off your todo lists - in fact I will definitely come back for a proper, quiet and analytical experience. Because as ONS motto goes: "better statistics - better decisions" (we also have a security motto "just because you should, doesn't mean you can", or something along those lines...).

A sense of responsibility awoke, however, in my pizza co-hunters and here I bring you exclusive statements from some of them.

"Very tasty and very cheesy quattro formaggi pizza. I would say the second best 4 cheese I've had in Cardiff - but the best was a very high standard to match" (Lewis D. 2018)

"Mine was too sour with anchovies" (Turkin A. 2018)

"The flour was at the crossroads of white and wheat" (Dragan R. 2018)

"The pizza was good" (Beck P. 2018)

I went further and asked Ben and Ellie, if they thought their pizza was unforgiving or whether they felt it was kind. After all, such adjectives are used by the most prominent of food experts! After a few attempts and being stared at like a weirdo though, I decided to let go and rather keep my friends.

A night continued with some failed attempts at finding a karaoke bar and couple more pints in Gwdihw, watching trumpet-playing band. Indeed, facing the Ruthless Passage of Time can be daunting, but one thing I learned over the years - even that can be fun with friends!

The next morning, I continued facing the RPOT as me, Lenka and Alex were joined by a Slovak couple Robert and Marta for a hike in the Waterfall country. The plan was to go in any kind of weather, in fact, as Lenka wanted to "become more like Bear Grylls", we almost hoped for a shitty day full of rain! Miraculously, our hopes were fulfilled despite the forecast only promising "scattered rain" (sure, forecast, sure..).

Lenka's artistic pic depicting our quick cooking break under a overhanging rock

Alex, making coffee in style!

Me, testing the new cooking gear by making some delicatessen

After dipping in

Dips in the ice-cold waterfalls were followed by Wim Hoffs breathing exercises and roaring sounds made by me and Alex, which I like to think we made to establish our masculinity in the eyes of the observers, although much more likely we established that we are idiots.

Looking at it from perspective, getting out of a freezing water, sitting down and shouting "fully in, let go! .. and now you stop, you don't breath!" is unlikely to be met with approval in our society, and is more likely to be met with an arrest.

But those are the moments when you appreciate the awesome people: old mates such as Alex, amazing sisters such as Lenka or the new Bear Gryllsy friends such as Robert and Marta.