Being lazy and seasonal

I trust you had a restful Christmas break and luxuriated in the company of family and friends while waiting for the dead time to pass. No papers (more precisely, nothing much in them), no updates or new apps for the iPad (though if you got one as a commemoration of the birth of Jesus, enjoy it – I love mine) most restaurants serving a set festive menu and generally you get to understand Scrooge’s take on it all.

The politicians take some time off from providing grist for my mill, rendering themselves liable to a charge of dereliction of duty and many columnists will at some point or other succumb to the temptation to be seasonal and grind their axe wearing a red hat with white trimming. Thus, I was told, that Balzan person who writes in MaltaToday listed the prezzies some people would be getting – his listing was as creative as most of his writing, with yours truly getting “awarded” (note to Maltese journalists: when you get awarded, you’re the prize being given, what you mean to write is “rewarded”) for being the best brown-nose columnist around.

Sorry, Saviour, I have that one already, since you or someone like me gave it to me many, many years ago: if you can’t be funny, try to be original. No hard feelings, though, because I know where he’s coming from and it’s not really his fault that his agenda has become the all-encompassing focus of his life.

I’ll be as lazy as the others, then, and be seasonal, in that I will make up for the dearth of restaurant reviews occasioned by our sojourn (a pompous word just to irritate you for Christmas) in Argentina.

Taking the basics first, all thoughts of diets being banished for the time being, we had quite a number of pizzas around the islands. Il-Qbajjar Restaurant in, duh, Qbajjar up North serves up a pretty acceptable one, as does a near(ish) neighbour, Pulena in the Menqa, and at both places, you’re going to get the usual Gozitan service, which is friendly and efficient.

Coming South, in a break from trying to add to the general gaiety of shopkeepers around this time, my biking son and I grabbed a quick pizza at Amigos in Paceville – it was lunchtime so parking was easy and the crowds not there, but this did not detract from the general excellence of the meal – cheap and cheerful, edible without the need of a knife and tasty.

I was only going to make a passing reference to Margo’s, now also in Valletta, to say that it was an OK pizza and leave it at that, but they thought it would be a good idea to get themselves some coverage, using as a peg the €1,800 pizza they have on the menu.

This, predictably enough, gave rise to the usual pinch-faced whines in the comments section online, prompting in me yet again the thought that online editors really should give some further thought as to whether comments should be allowed on serious media websites.

But this pizza, for all that it led to a closing sentence in the puff-piece about how you can identify the fruits of your ablutionary labours after eating it by the golden hue while it lies in the bog, does not exercise me at all – it’s marketing, pure and simple if puerile.

What does rile me, though, is the fact that the restaurant is way long on talk (I was going to write something else, but this paper, as opposed to its Sunday cousin, draws the line at references to excrement, even that of male cows) but way short on delivery. When you read the menu, you gain the impression that you’re about to partake of a repast of cosmic proportions in the taste and texture departments, such are the hyperboles liberally scattered about the pages.

Mine was an “ai funghi” and I was promised sublime tastes and perfumes. I got a decent pizza base, very acceptable in fact, and toppings and fillings that were pedestrian, at best. She Who Must opted for the veggie version and got, believe it or not, boiled “qarabagħli” (which she hates, though that’s her fault, not theirs) and what she swears were chips, along with the more standard fare, leading her to pronounce the pizza as one of the least impressive she’s ever eaten.

The comments from the rest of the group were on the same lines – good enough but, hey, what’s with the self-praise? The service, which you’d expect would try to approach the heights promised (but not delivered) for the food, didn’t, by a long shot and to cap it all, I was unable to finish my (promised to be) light chocolate mousse, not because it came in a jar, which is a foible I can put up with for all that it denotes that it wasn’t prepared all that recently, but because it was one of the heaviest versions of one of my favourite desserts that I have ever come across.

We went to other places over the holiday season, as my expanded waistline will testify, such as Garam Masala in Msida (great stuff) and Ta’ Rosina in Sannat (great party) and I’m sure there are others which I’ve forgotten.

You’re reading this on New Year’s Day, so have a good one, why don’t you?

imbocca@gmail.com

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