Sailing the accountan-sea

Ed eats

Grill 3301
Corinthia San Ġorġ,
St Julian’s
Tel: 2370 2537

Food: 8/10
Service: 10/10
Ambience: 9/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 8.5/10

Never mind centuries of science and the wisdom it has bestowed upon us. Never mind the mind-numbingly accurate calculations the boffins quote when telling us about the planet’s wobble as it spins on its axis.

The earth really and truly spins on stories, driven by the urgent relentlessness of narrative. And so it carries us along with it too, powerless stowaways that succumb to the might of this massive yarn that has been spun over the millennia by our predecessors.

We use stories to persuade, to educate, to entertain and to illustrate a complex point. Even without thinking about it, we resort to the power of metaphor to help drive a point home, and even conjure up plausible fiction to deceive.

We landed on the moon because of thousands of years of stories that made it elusive and unconquerable. Then once we got there, we realised there was absolutely no need for us to go back any more. The story had been fulfilled.

It is no surprise then, that stories form an important part of the process by which food and drinks make the journey from raw ingredients to our plates. Exotic liqueurs are sold to us as an affordable journey to a tropical island.

Oriental food is our own personal trip to ostensibly arcane lands that we would not normally travel to every Saturday night. Every country in the world has an Irish pub. Every country in the world has an Italian restaurant. The shamrock, the leprechaun, la dolce vita, all have a place in our minds that drive an irrational desire for weaving our own life story with that of the tale we’ve heard.

Unfortunately, products that don’t have much to offer are often the most powerful peddlers of stories. Most of the greatest wines on earth come from chateaux that don’t even bother with a back label (at least until the law forced them to add so much nonsense that they had to).

All the story it has to tell is present in the name of the chateau and the vintage. Newer entrants cannot compete without making a fuss and the most incredibly tenuous larks are made up to give this fledgling wine a story.

“This wine is named Cap’n Bill Dregg after the pirate who, washed ashore in South Africa after 30 days clinging to a vine stem for dear life, decided he had had enough of the sea. He planted the vine and started a tradition of wine-making that you have somehow only heard about today. Shame on you. Yarr.” I wouldn’t be surprised to see that on a back-label one of these days.

A self-confessed steak-lover suggested we dine at Grill 3301 in St George’s Bay, a restaurant that forms part of the Corinthia hotel. With a name like that, I was hoping there would be a very clever story behind it. I was intrigued, and all the way there I kept trying to guess what it could possibly be.

The postcode was one option I immediately dismissed as daft but remains my only plausible premise. There are wines named after the latitude they hail from and that is bad enough.

The restaurant is perched on the outermost tip of St George’s Bay and is a really lovely space to dine in. Surrounded by glass panes that overlook the bay and wrapped around a central kitchen, the place feels very deliberately designed to maximise the opportunities available for a meal with a view while making sure there is never a large, continuous space that makes any large restaurant feel impersonal.

We were guided to our tables by an incredibly polite young lady who made sure we were comfortably settled in, took our orders for drinks and left the menus. We sat and enjoyed the late sunset and a surreal, massive moon that rose from behind the Dragonara casino. The menus are gorgeously laid out and easy to navigate although the descriptive text feels rather contrived.

Starters are described as tiny appetizers, and the menu recommends two per person. While both of us are prime candidates for the front row of the glutton’s circle of the inferno, we decided to play safe and order three between us.

The pages dedicated to steak are as complete as one could possibly hope for. The chef has evidently trawled the globe, taking chunks out of many breeds of cow from every corner of the earth.

From the brave and hardy Charollais, smiling in the face of a Burgundy winter, to the overly spoiled Waygu Kobe, the steaks on the menu are classified by provenance and species before going into the cuts and weights. This is what any self-respecting beef menu should look like and is, based on my experience in Malta, the shining standard for beef menus.

I happen to love the cows that sip from the ice-cold lochs in Scotland with not a thought for the dangers that lurk in their depths, so a Porterhouse carved out of an Aberdeen Angus sounded like just the thing for me. Tipping the scales at 600g, this was also the most generous cut. My fellow carnivore opted for the Aberdeen Angus Ribeye.

My initial choice was a Charollais and so I had already picked a Burgundy Pinot Noir to stick to the region. There being no wine from Scotland on the menu (and we were not entirely surprised), we stuck with our first choice. The wine menu is reasonably well-sourced but quite enthusiastically priced, so a €12 bottle of local wine is priced at €35.

Our wine was served by the most incredibly well-trained young man. He was polite and well-mannered, understanding the art of table service and putting all its finer points into practice. He changed our wine glasses to more suitable ones, tidied up our table, and served wine with textbook precision. Needless to say, my guest and I were impressed.

Following a rather disappointing amuse bouche (one that started off as a good idea but burned at some stage in its preparation), our starters were served by yet another young lady with the same impeccable manners.

The honey quail with fig was simply stupendous and a single good reason to return to Grill 3301 for more. Octopus with lemon and fennel turned out to lack in the fennel department but was enjoyable nonetheless, even if a shade overcooked.

The ‘crusted’ calamari with chilli mayonnaise were, as I suspected, battered rings. The chilli mayo was lovely and supplemented by additional harissa at the suggestion of our super-polite hosts.

We realised that we shouldn’t devour all of our starters and left about half of the generous octopus portion. While our dishes were being cleared, one of the young ladies politely asked whether there was anything wrong with it. They’re attentive, too.

While we waited for our main course, the sun had set completely, turning the view outside into a postcard. Treated like royalty inside a postcard is something we agreed would could get used to quite easily.

Our steaks were served on lovely cast-iron dishes and accompanying potatoes and veggie shepherd’s pie each in their own cast-iron cocottes. I should have known, ordering a 600g porterhouse, that there couldn’t be much height to it.

My order for rare was based on the additional temperature needed to melt the fat in the wonderfully marbled beef. The 28 days of wet ageing saved the day and, while the striploin side wasn’t remarkable, the tenderloin was fantastic.

A pepper sauce we ordered on the side was a total let-down, with a congealed layer of peppers and goo on top and a sugary, caramelised base. The rib-eye was a thicker cut, impeccably grilled, and above just short of being considered excellent.

We had no room for dessert and were given time to finish off our wine before we were offered complimentary coffee and petit-fours. These were fabulous and were followed by a bill of €60 each.

Adopting a name like Engelbert Humperdink in the 60s, the musician had to produce great music. His name alone was never going make him famous. My story for Grill 3301 is a little like that.

The creators of this restaurant worried about importing the best beef that this green planet has to offer. They fussed over matching the right wines. They took pains to recruit fabulous staff and picked a stunning spot to serve every steak that leaves their grill.

Then they let their accountant pick a name.