Good enough for Noah

Ed eats

Yacht Café
120, Ta’ Xbiex Seafront,
Ta’ Xbiex
Tel: 2133 5256

Food: 7/10
Service: 8/10
Ambience: 8/10
Value: 7/10
Average: 7.5/10

Noah’s life must have been a tough one. I’m not quite sure about his childhood – that could have been a walk in the park – but his time spent at sea can’t have been easy.

We’ve all read about his contribution to animal welfare and admire him for it until this very day. What I wonder is how he managed to cook a decent meal when at sea for so long.

He couldn’t have cooked any of the animals. That would have been just wrong. The seas, following a storm of biblical proportions (no metaphor in his case), can’t have been calm either, so the poor man must have been thrown around his galley for the majority of his trip.

He surely didn’t have access to a gimballed stove either. The more I think about it, the more I admire the builder of arks. And the more I think Jonah was a little cleverer, looking at his meal from the inside.

The last time I prepared a meal at sea, I was unanimously nominated the boat’s cook for the entire trip.

Two weeks at sea in hugely varying conditions can seriously dent a man’s ability in the kitchen, particularly when the ingredients you need are sliding across the counter at the same rate as you are approaching the floor.

I decided I’d be practical (read ‘lazy’) most of the time, particularly when the sea was in one of its moods, and resort to sandwiches and other similar cop-outs.

We all put up with the basics knowing that we’d be making it to terra firma at some point and that we would be looking for a restaurant the minute the last mooring line was made fast.

Researching restaurants before reaching destinations can be helpful, if occasionally confusing. Trip Advisor is a particularly useful site since we always made sure we were never lured into a restaurant that appears in the top 50 spots.

One sure-fire tip on Trip Advisor is the phrase ‘definately (sic) the best restaurant on the island!’. Misspelling the word ‘definitely’, claiming to have identified the ‘best’ restaurant during a four-night all-inclusive stay, and the use of multiple punctuation marks are all signs of a sick mind.

Sometimes the same restaurant gets four or five ‘definately the best!’ reviews. I avoid these at all costs.

The hardest part is finding the hidden-away places, usually off the main thoroughfare. These don’t need a high volume of traffic to thrive since they depend on an excellent kitchen for return clients and referrals.

I was recently introduced to Yacht Café in Ta’ Xbiex. When I say ‘introduced’, I mean the place was mentioned, and so as I often do in these situations, I went there for lunch with the person who recommended it.

This way, if there happens to be anything wrong with the place, the person recommending it gets to suffer with me. Luckily the recommendation came from someone who really knows more about food than 95 per cent of the population, so I felt quite safe.

The word café is a little misleading. Cosily nestling inside one of the small boathouses in Ta’ Xbiex, it is more of a purveyor of Lebanese snacks than anything else.

Parking just outside at lunchtime is refreshingly easy. Finding a table might be harder since there isn’t room for more than 20 people at the six little tables.

We secured one of the tables outside that commands a delightful view of the marina and part of Marsamxett harbour. Sitting on the pavement does put you in close proximity to the traffic too, so it was a blessing that there was precious little of it at that time.

The menu was written on two suspended blackboards above the little counter and offered a number of salads and wraps with typically North African fare. Dips including hummous, muhammara and baba ghanoush were available with salads and these were joined by specialities like falafel and dolmades.

The lady at the counter, who introduced herself as Maria, was extremely friendly and helpfully described all they had available in as much detail as I requested.

I asked about the muhammara, liking it hotter than usual, and rather than giving me the usual ‘not too hot but a little hot’ that leaves me just as enlightened as before I’d asked, she promptly suggested that I taste it before ordering. Nice touch.

While I considered what I felt like eating and scanned the boards once again, my lunch companion chose a chicken salad. That put pressure on me. It jiggled the part of my conscience that insists on healthy food. That bit I could quietly ignore.

It also meant that the person who had been here before seemed to like the salads chez Yacht Café, and that is not something one ignores too quickly.

A little guidance from Maria led me to the Lebanese salad and, orders sorted, we took our seats.

Our salads didn’t take long to be served, perfect timing in fact for hopping out of the office for a quick lunch. The chicken salad looked the part, with a generous helping of grilled chicken atop a mound of salad.

The Lebanese salad included one dip – baba ghanoush in my case – as well as a portion of falafel, a couple of Wara’ enab and some pitta bread to dip.

The falafel was unlike the perfect little balls that one gets in Westernised establishments. The patties were irregularly shaped, the consistency felt home-made, and the flavour hadn’t been given a salty leg-up.

A hint of cumin helped the chick-peas without stomping all over them. Wara’ enab, a delicately spiced rice and meat stuffing wrapped in tender vine leaves, resembled the Hellenic dolmades that we might be more familiar with.

The leafy part of the salad could have been better dressed and it reminded me why I don’t often order a salad. Unless assisted by a tasty vinaigrette I’m reluctant to chomp on a lettuce leaf that tastes of nothing much more than a green leaf.

Feeling satiated but not overfed, we chatted for a while after lunch and agreed that, while not a contender for ‘definately the best restaurant in Malta!’, Yacht Café has the potential to be a strong player in the quick, healthy and tasty meal market. The service is rapid, the food genuine and the price reasonable, while the location and ease of parking really make for a winner.

A little chat with Maria after the meal revealed one very interesting offering of the Yacht Café. They deliver their little taste of Lebanon to boats in the marina.

The majority of the food they serve is equally tasty served cold or a few hours after it has been prepared and can keep for a while so they’re trying to expand their business in this way.

Noah would have been delighted.

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