AND IN THE END

Note - This was first published on The Sunday Times on December 26th, 2010


Without so much as a proper fanfare, the year comes to an end. It is the time when most of us feel like we ought to have introspective musings about the cyclical nature of things, about the arbitrariness of picking a day for the year to be declared as having finally ended, and about being slimmer people as soon as the new one is born. I think this whole lot of thinking is brought about by more drinking than usual. When we've had a couple, we share the jolly thoughts of a great year that was better but shorter than all the others, one during which the turducken (chicken inside a duck inside a turkey) held together better than any other, a year that saw the hiring of that hilarious guy at work. Then the next morning hits. That is when the sadness of it all rings true, when all we've done was a waste of time, when we could have used our energies to end world peace. Or was it the other way around? Pass the aspirin.

Am I blaming alcohol for all our end-of-year cogitation? Perhaps I wouldn't go so far as attributing all that's going on but I'm sure it has had a great part in this final act, taking the last bow as the curtain closes. Many a war has been started when a drunken king would take no heed to his wise counsellors, preferring an inebriated "Kill them all!" to the tedious alternative of actually working things out. And as the army prepares for its long and bloody ordeal, the King takes another nibble at the cold, roast boar from the night before and wonders why his ring doesn't have quite the sheen to it. Or whatever inanities Kings wonder on the morning after.

I've got a little bit of a retrospective to share, too. Not that I've been drinking at all, having had to spend more than a week indoors when the flu came a-knocking. This is more like a year in the life of eating out in a very brief summary. I won't be doing a top-trumps edition by food type because Doug will do a great job of it if last year's edition was anything to go by. Instead I will share with you some moments that defined the year in ways that range from delightful to outrageous.

I’ll start with mentioning a couple of episodes that had to be left out of reviews to retain a reasonable word count. The first of these happened at a restaurant that I happen not to have reviewed, an incident gave me one of the funniest moments this year. A young lady, obviously new to the ropes, had been doing a shaky but acceptable affair of attending to our table. She had evidently never written on a paper pad while standing up, had never carried more than a plate in each hand, and had never, ever used a pepper mill. I jest not, dear readers, when I say that she held the pepper mill, upside down, over my plate and shook hard, expecting ground pepper to miraculously fall from its tightening-screw. I gently took this from her hand, overturned the device, and proceeded to grind pepper to her unconcealed amazement. “I’m not an expert yet,” is what she had to say and I admired her ability to half-apologise while retaining a shred of dignity.

An episode I left out, and I mention here because ten people at table asked why I had skipped it, is the time we were being treated quite roughly when one of us found a rather long hair in her plate of cannelloni. The hair had been baked into the dish and this was pointed out to the staff. Their reaction was astounding, starting with an investigation, proceeding to denial, and then finally accepting to replace the meal after making it quite clear that much was being made ado about nothing. I have plenty of experiences of appalling service but I suppose one will suffice. It is too tempting to turn this page into a whinge about the generally poor level of service we’ve come to expect.

There is one more minor mishap that I, as an observer, consider a highlight of my year. You will have to understand that this is, however, a very personal view and I don’t expect all readers to slap their thighs the way I did. I was having a rather informal dinner with a brother of mine who is a rabid supporter of a UK football club that should be facing relegation soon. The spot we sat at was in full view of three televisions, each showing a different live match. For footie-viewing reasons he picked the spot without cutlery and promptly asked the waiter to make amends. Two minutes later the young lad trots our way, fork and napkin in hand. Some guy on TV scored a presumably spectacular goal at that very moment, making my brother move backwards at the same time as our fork-bearer walked into him, obviously also keen on watching the replay. The collision left four little tine-shaped holes on the back of my brother’s follicularly-devoid head. The look of surprise on both of their faces is a tableau that I will not forget in a hurry.

The year was quite thankfully peppered with pleasant surprises. Sardi Trattoria in Sliema was one of these, serving up great trattoria food at an amazing value. I had been there before when it was still under a different guise and was delighted with the change for the better. Another treasure trove was the highly unlikely Ali Baba in Gzira – a restaurant that looks like a grocery store from the outside and yet serves the best Lebanese this side of the Al Azy river. For an insanely inexpensive meal that is refreshingly different from most other food on the islands I can think of no better option. I have yet to return to either of these little gems, and this is the fault of my schedule and not any lack of desire to enjoy their fares over and over again.

A special mention goes to Andrew and his colleagues at Salvinos. There is no other place I re-visit and that maintains a consistency of quality, service, wine offering and above all, inventiveness. Consistency is the highest accolade a restaurant can aim for. Unfortunately it is sometimes achieved by serving the exact same items for decades. Not so in the case of Salvinos. I have never eaten the same thing twice and I have never, ever been anything short of delighted.

I look forward to 2011 and the gastronomic surprises that it surely has in store. I hope that this time next year my chronicles will all be recollections of dazzling evenings that feature outstanding service, fabulous food, and wine stolen from the goblet of Bacchus himself. And while I’m positive that my frolics with the world of dining out will continue to surprise and delight me, I’m afraid there will be disappointments in store. As usual, I promise to tell it the way it is - after all I owe you the truth, dear readers. I wish you all a fantastic new year, one of indescribable hedonistic indulgence in the food and wine department. The rest, I’m afraid, is up to you!

THE TIME MACHINE

Lo Squero

Hay Wharf,

Floriana

Tel 21232700

Food 6

Service 9

Ambiance 7

Value 6

Average 7

Witticisms about predicting the future have been around since HG Wells brought the phrase ‘time machine’ into the forefront of our vernacular. The best way of predicting the future is to design it, claims one particularly bold car manufacturer. A man famous for coloured thinking hats said pretty much the same thing and claimed the phrase as his own. And where the witticisms fail, the conundrums start. What if I entered a time machine and stole my dad’s car on the night I was conceived? He’d have been too busy filing police reports to bother with any sort of behaviour that could lead to my being here today. Or yesterday.

And so while I would love to predict what this year could possibly yield, I must settle for getting through my day without any major mishap and hoping that dinner tonight will be worth writing home about. Or at least worth sharing with the beautiful readers of this esteemed publication. I shared this thought with a friend of mine who said that he’d love to go out to dinner but simply getting through his day had caused a rather inconvenient leg injury. Quite how he managed this remains a mystery. The long and short of it, however, meant the selection of a restaurant that could provide very convenient parking and absolutely no stairs.

Being the generous and obliging spirit that I am, I left the choice of venue in his hands. It was his leg, after all, that was dictating terms. He booked a table for six at Lo Squero in Valletta and I naturally queried his maths. Could the fall have dented his ability to count up to four? It turns out he was including his decidedly delectable daughter bringing the tally up to five, and an additional chair for his poor leg that needed to spend some time horizontal. I’m quite positive that a lot of the mise en scene was overly dramatic but I could hardly tell him that. Let’s hope he buys Sunday papers inferior to this one.

And so at the strike of eight of the evening clock we convened, with all the women who rule our lives plus a pair of crutches for additional support. Parking outside Lo Squero is really a convenient affair and the view down there is simply amazing. Perched on the seafront of Marsamxett, one can see all the way from Sa Maison to Tigne point.

A sign outside claims that this is a ristorante Italiano. Thus warned we headed inside and into the past. Red drapes billow from the ceiling over the bar area and thin, white panelling covers the restaurant ceiling. Ageing drapes partially obscure the wonderful view and little lanterns attached to the columns complete that early eighties look. HG Wells smirked, knowingly.

We were shown to our table that occupied a prime spot, with just a pane of glass (and those period curtains) separating us from the sea outside. A charming man, smiling in the most welcoming of manners, made sure we were settled comfortably, leg and all. In a mixture of Italian, Maltese and English he discussed our plans for the meal ahead and I went with the injured man’s desire to start with as many different pasta dishes as we could handle. Black tufoli with seppioline (tiny cuttle-fish) in a tomato base, spaghetti vongole (clams) and spaghetti ricci (sea urchin) would do the trick and these would be accompanied by a bottle of Greco di Tufo. We agreed that we would discuss our main course when we were done with the pasta.

Quite soon we were served some crunchy bruschetta and an alternative to the tomato-based nibble with a black olive paste. We munched and talked and I was introduced to the virtues of watching X-factor and wearing Ugg boots by the delectable daughter. I realised that my education had been sadly neglected since it had unfortunately not included either of these two staples. I saved face by managing to correctly expand all the three letter acronyms she threw at me so all was not lost and my social reputation scraped through the match with a respectable draw.

Quite a while passed before our pasta was served and we sat and sipped the wine, enjoying the relatively dark-coloured white. Somehow Greco di Tufo often reminds me of a Viognier which, to my knowledge is unrelated. In any case, most of it was gone by the time the pasta arrived. The portions of pasta to share were quite generous and we started to share these around the table. I decided to work my way up, leaving the heavier, tomato-based seppioline until the end. The sea-urchin based dish was decent but quite unremarkable while the spaghetti with clams was decidedly better if a little rich for my liking. Here I must state a personal preference for simplest of iterations of this dish and everyone around the table simply loved this particular one. The tiny cousins of the squid had been treated to a very generous dose of chilli pepper. I happen to love the devilish stuff and I know I’m in a relative minority here. The appalled looks around the table confirmed that I was the only one really enjoying the baby cuttle-fish that gushed lava when I bit into them.

The good thing for me about excess chilli is that I get to enjoy much more than my fair share but this was clearly a mistake that the kitchen had made. Tears flowed around the table, water was imbibed in biblical quantities, no doubt to make up for the loss, and four people and a leg opted for the other two plates. In every case, the pasta itself had been made in-house and was nothing short of excellent in terms of texture, cooking time and its ability to snuggle up to the sauce rather than let it sit on its lap.

By the end of this we were all far too full to contemplate a second course and it was also getting rather late. We even managed to turn down the very tantalizing offer of dessert, such was our level of satiation.

We sat back and enjoyed the view, sipping our post-prandial liqueurs and waiting for the bill that quite surprisingly hit the €100 mark. If one were to divide this by five, we paid a reasonable €20 each (I’m leaving the seated leg out of all calculations) but if one considers that we had three dishes of pasta and a bottle of wine that works out to roughly €25 per pasta dish. It would take a hell of a lot more pasta than that to justify what we paid for it. In all fairness we had been treated like royalty from start to finish, with every person who attended to our table being extremely polite and friendly, seeing to our every whim with smiles and a respectable turn of speed so I could hardly complain about a couple of pints worth of perceived discrepancy in value.

I walked out wishing for a time machine, one that could take me back to the eighties when the décor would have been perfect for the time and the fabulous view had not yet been marred by several architectural abominations that stick out like sore thumbs (or broken legs). Square up to the 21^st century, Lo Squero, and when you do I’ll be back for more squid.

TOKYO DRAGON

Okura

No. 9, Landsdown
Paceville Avenue
St. Julian's, Malta

2781 1888

Food - 8

Service - 6

Ambiance - 5

Value - 9

Avg - 7

Much in the same way as some people remember what they were doing when they found out about Lady Di's passing or the day they found out the truth about Father Christmas, I remember the day I was introduced to the album called Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. I wish I could say it was a life-changing moment but my life resumed its dreariness without any consideration for how momentous this should have been. The music has been extensively discussed eleswhere but I remember reading something in the liner notes about a particular form of Japanese art.

A pen is drawn across a wet, stretched parchment to produce a hint of the image one is trying to portray. Press too hard, and the nib will break through the surface. Hesitate for a moment and the ink will spread, immortalising your lack of decisiveness with a rather unsightly blob. The Japanese had understood that if the moment is captured, there is nothing that can ever imitate or reproduce it - the same nation that gave us mass production and the Toyota model was teaching us about transience. While I wished to write and tell the guys to decide what they really wanted the world to think of them they were busy producing my TV and sound system so I shut up and listened to the album.

The Japanese also gave us umami, that elusive and translation-defying fifth taste. I suspect this is why were were only really taught four in school. Imagine a primary school teacher having to field questions after saying, "There are five basic tastes - sweet, sour, bitter, salty and umami." The closest we get is 'savoury' but it does not do justice to the taste and somehow implies 'salty' which takes us further from the truth. Although we first experience the glutamates that are responsible for this when breastfeeding, we get to enjoy them later in life as different foods come together to give a flavour that is better than both ingredients put together. In Japan this would be seaweed and fish. Closer to home we add Parmeggiano to tomato-based sauces. And now you know what kind of synergy we're talking about.

One quiet weeknight I thought I'd try the Japanese version and headed over to Okura in Paceville. It is far enough from the madding crowd to be quiet even on the weekends but I wasn't taking any chances. Parking is a doddle, especially considering that it is a drunken stone's throw away from the Portomaso car park. Parking there is free for Okura patrons so we start our evening with a point in favour of the Japanese restaurant. The place itself is nothing remarkable. Other than a few paper lampshades with Japanese script on them there is very little to add Japanese character to the dining area. The music in the background is nondescript and a flat screen with Discovery Science on it completes the rather haphazard approach to creating an appropriate ambiance. We're shown to our table by a young man who I'm hoping wears a Japanese digital watch as a claim to Japanese fame. If it is a yellow Casio F-91 then I'm all the more impressed but he is as Maltese as ever.

We're presented with the menu, a rather comprehensive affair with a restricted sashimi selection that plays safe rather than optimistic and the welcome addition of some imaginative items that go beyond the typical spread. The selection is quite vast and really quite tempting so trying to choose what to leave out quickly became quite a trying endeavour. Matters became even more complicated when our young man pointed out the 'buffet' option. This basically means that one can practically order the entire menu for the fixed price of €23.50.

This isn't as simple as it sounds. We were provided with a sheet of paper that includes the entire menu split into four sections. We were instructed to order in phases, moving to the next step only after we'd finished the previous one. A few items were restricted to one per person and this included, quite predictably, the sashimi section. The rest was almost entirely up to our discretion and came with a single proviso. They don't like waste. If you order an item and you don't actually consume it, this will be added to your bill at the end. Draconian as this may sound it does help dampen the temptation of ordering much more than you can possibly eat and let most of it go to waste.

I started ordering across the sushi menu, picking the sashimi first, followed by a trio of nigiri (finger sushi) items to include my favourites - octopus and smoked eel - and then went through the maki (seaweed and rice rolls plus the ingredients of your choice) and the more interesting 'New style' rolls that seem to be a speciality of this place and include the more colourfully named 'Tokyo Dragon' and 'Crazy Monkey' variants. Keeping in mind that one maki roll is sliced into an average of six, bite-sized, portions I tried to exercise some restraint. The next issue I had was the miso soup that featured in the second part of our order sheet. I like miso soup the Japanese way, served with the food (and when possible topped up). I mentioned this and the attentive young man said there would be no problem as long as I filled in all of my choices for the second set. I went ahead and ordered prawn tempura and spicy lamb skewers along with the soup.

Warm sake is a drink I rarely forego with

sushi and was lucky to be the only person at table who actually loves it. A bottle of Marsovin’s excellent Ulysses Chenin Blanc accompanied the sake for the sake of my lovely guest. I vowed to stick largely to my chosen drink but the refreshing citrus zest of this locally grown white helped my break my promise again and again. I was tempted to teach the enthusiastic young man how to serve wine but so sweet was his demeanour that I had no heart to embarrass him. He’ll grow and he’ll learn.

A quick look around at the other patrons filled me with hope. Every other table bar a couple in the far corner was filled with Japanese people. It felt like the Japanese community had been here before, liked what it tasted, and came back for more. Short of consulting my i-ching, I could think of no better omen than this vote of confidence.

Soon enough the reason for their presence was made apparent. The miso soup was as authentic as it gets and the truck-load of sushi I had actually ordered turned up in a gigantic, circular container and looked divine. It was also evident that it could easily feed a small family. We dug in immediately, dispatching the sashimi first and working our way through to the more spicy items, refreshing our palate occasionally with pickled ginger, warm sake and cold wine.

The sushi was consistently fresh, well-made and on occasion innovative. While I tend to object to some of the Western additions that subtly seep into sushi, I understand that this has helped contribute to its popularisation in the West. Okura has found a happy medium and the tables around me bore testament to this. The selection of fish used is quite restricted, the chef having preferred the safe and ‘permanent’ use of tuna and salmon over the more risky seasonal species that I hope are made ample use of during the more bountiful summer months.

We skipped the third ‘main course’ stage, both because we’d overdone the first two and because the main courses didn’t sound as attractive as the sushi we’d just enjoyed.

I rounded off my meal with an interesting green tea ice cream while the dessert across the table goes into my books as one of the most bizarre I’ve seen. And I’ve eaten my mother’s cooking. Picture a Nutella core, surrounded with sushi rice and topped with strawberry sauce - a seaweed-less Nutella maki roll. I tried one but that is as far as I could possibly go. The meal cost €65 for both of us which is decent value for virtually limitless sushi of a respectable quality. I’d be prepared to live with the insipid décor and relatively amateur service at that price. What was really priceless though was the fact that for once I was not the only person in the restaurant snapping away at the food.