Ed eats

Gululu
Spinola Bay,
St Julian’s
Tel: 2133 3431

Food: 5/10
Service: 5/10
Ambience: 6/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 6/10

Last week was a scorcher. A random lady in a random lift decided to tell me that July is hotter than August. I nodded meekly, appreciating that she decided to share this nugget of wisdom with me and wondering what the venerable creators of the scientific method would have to say about her uniquely empirical approach.

I did not dare pointing out the obvious. She was pleased enough with her conclusions to share them with a man she had never met, let alone spoken to before.

This was a harmless monologue, no doubt spurred by her exasperation when having to face the heat.

Living on this little rock prepares us for this climate but some still feel compelled to come up with theories about something we’ve lived with since we first made an appearance.

Keep calm and carry on, says the poster. Perhaps we should plaster the place with them throughout this hottest of seasons.

Unfortunately, wild claims are not exclusive to the weather. So many restaurants succumb to the temptation when describing their wares.

‘The best pizza in town!’ screams the A-board outside. The fancier ones use words like ‘concept’ and ‘unique’, often both in the same sentence, to describe the irresistible wonders that their kitchen has to offer.

Rarely, and the infrequency is a small mercy, restaurants rely on criticising all others in an attempt to shine. It is a behaviour I associate with the playground bully when having to tell the headmistress why they misbehaved. They point fingers at someone whose actions were so much worse than theirs to make their misgivings pale in comparison.

The introduction to the menu at Gululu in St Julian’s starts by claiming that other restaurants that serve Maltese food are ‘kitsch and folksy’. They dismiss all others in a manner that is both patronising and mildly insulting.

At this point it will help to reproduce a definition of kitsch as found in the source of all wisdom – Wikipedia (even if I’d be happier with a wikipaedia if it ever turned up).

Kitsch “is a form of art that is considered an inferior, tasteless copy of an extant style of art or a worthless imitation of art of recognised value”. Most other definitions include words like ‘lowbrow’.

So we should be at the home of fine art, a well-established restaurant that, like the Savoy Grill, reeks of old money, spent well.

We are, by their claim, in a modern-classic gem that has done away with old Kinnie bottles and black-and-white photography, to replace these with family heirlooms.

The leather on chairs designed by Ray and Charles Eames creaks pleasingly under my highbrow backside.

Perhaps this is a work in progress but the shelf with old soft-drink bottles is there, above the table I am seated at. Black-and-white photos of times gone by stare at me from the wall-to-wall mirror just in front of me.

Traditional Maltese wooden chairs are painted silver, hoping to be as unrecognisable as a hippo wearing aviator sunglasses. Surely we’d mistake him for Tom Cruise in Top Gun.

The location of this restaurant is excellent. Right on the water’s edge in Spinola bay, the outside seating is as close as it gets to the water without wetting your feet.

Umbrellas provide shade during the day and dining out here in the evening is like sitting inside a holiday brochure. The dining area inside is cooler and we opt for a lower temperature over the lovely setting.

Once past the questionable introduction, the menus are quite a comprehensive affair, spanning most of the traditional Maltese kitchen and including English descriptions. This location must see quite a healthy flow of tourists so English descriptions are a must.

We were greeted by a young man who was quietly cordial and quite polite, helpful with menus and drinks, and happy to give us the time and space to browse through the menu.

Not so happy to let us wait was his colleague who turned up every minute to see if we were ready to order. In her defence, she is one of the few waitresses I know outside Indian restaurants who took our order without writing anything down. I find this disconcerting until all the food is served, and only then do I find admiration inside me for the memory feat.

She also treated one of my guests to a sneer when a perfectly legitimate question about the menu was asked – one that was followed by a snide remark when the dish in question was served.

You could do this in the1970s but we have something called choice these days so it is wiser to be polite and patient when you think the question being asked by a diner is beneath you.

We ordered small starters to share. Being the only glutton at table I picked the fritturi tat-tisfija (tiny, transparent fish that the Italians call neonati) while the more reasonable people at table went for fażola bit-tewm and ġbejniet tal-bżar.

The ġbejna was probably the best I’ve ever tasted, fresh and yielding instantly to the fork, coated in freshly ground pepper and a perfect companion to the crusty bread.

Fażola bit-tewm is never a dish to offer surprises and this didn’t. There was something odd about the fritturi and I got through one, shared one and left the other.

Main courses took a little while to be served and I ordered my third Kinnie. I hadn’t tasted it for a while and, inspired by the ancient bottles on the shelf, ordered one at the start of the meal. I thought it was a bottled masterpiece when I was just old enough to think and haven’t changed my high esteem for it since then.

I had ordered pulpetti tal-majjal as I wanted to avoid the more ‘folksy’ fenek moqli and tiġieġa fgata. The portion is generous, with six of the little balls of pork mince and plenty of baked potatoes.

The pulpetti tasted more like sausage and the potatoes were slightly undercooked and too firm in the centre for my liking. The onions were nice though.

Calamaretti had been promised fried in red wine but they seemed to be accompanied by a salty stock that was closely related to the one that my pulpetti were served with. They were enjoyable but unremarkable.

I didn’t try the octopus salad but it was described as ‘quite nice’ and that is all I have to base a description on I am afraid.

The dessert sounded enticing and included the not-folksy, not-kitsch, ġelat tat-tiġijiet. I had been unlucky with my choice of both starter and main course and wasn’t tempting fate a third time so paid €20 per person and headed out onto the quay of the tranquil, twinkling bay.

The man who lives in a glasshouse should not throw stones. Even before Gululu gives you the time to taste their fare they have criticised every other Maltese restaurant and posed as the place where the Maltese kitchen starts and most definitely ends.

Seriously, Gululu gurus, not quite yet. Tone down the insults, tighten up your kitchen, and your place among the Maltese restaurants of note will be well-deserved.

You can send e-mails about this column to ed.eatson@gmail.com or follow @edeats on Twitter. Or both.

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