Ed eats
The Boat House
Xatt ix-Xlendi,
Xlendi Bay
Gozo
Tel: 2156 9153
Food: 6/10
Service: 8/10
Ambience: 9/10
Value: 9/10
Overall: 8/10
I have started to dread December. Here we are, just half way through, and I am stuffed so full of food and drink that I feel like a human sausage. Every December, since my body realised it had had enough of being youthful, I gain five kilos and these stay with me until the next one.
By the time we were done the sun was almost setting between the outermost points of the little cove, making the view from our table just as pleasant as the bill
If I live for another 30 years, unlikely as this may be thanks to my eating habits, I’ll have gained another 150 kilos. I’m not putting money into a pension fund because I’ll never need one. I am putting the money into a fund for a very large coffin.
I am not surprised that we eat more during what’s considered a festive season. After all, using food to celebrate is decidedly more convivial than wrapping up toys and giving all the credit to a fictitious anthropomorphism who spends the night sneaking into the bedrooms of little children.
What astounds me is the ridiculous amount of rubbish that is advertised (and I presume, sold) during the period.
I am so astonished that vast quantities of inedible and unpalatable food are sold because, after all, it isn’t hard to separate the cheap from the inexpensive, the over-priced from the sensible, and the evident cons from the genuine article.
Here is a tip: Unless something is truly seasonal, like mince pies, for instance, there is no reason to buy it only once a year. If you have never, ever, considered eating a chocolate-coated marshmallow Christmas tree, chances are you’ll be better off adding that money to the next bottle of wine you purchase.
If you have saved a fiver on the spongy Christmas tree, you can upgrade the wine to something you and your guests (or hosts, if you’re taking it to a party) will enjoy much more. And the bottle of wine won’t have a sneaky use-by date that just happens to strike during November next year.
The same goes with food. I am never keen on ‘Christmas’ menus, ‘Valentine’s’ menus and the like. They are there for the restaurant to compete with others on price and deliver what seems to be good value.
Now there is nothing wrong with good value, nothing wrong with healthy competition, and nothing wrong with a ‘set menu’ per se. After all, some of the best meals I’ve had were in the form of a ‘set menu’ that the chef wanted us to taste. All I’d like to recommend at this time of year is that you exercise some discretion.
The Christmas menu at The Boat House restaurant in Xlendi provides exceptional value. Three courses that include a soup, a salmon steak and dessert will leave 5c change from €20.
Four of us sat in the unseasonal sunshine for lunch one afternoon, in T-shirts and sunglasses half way through December, and two of the foursome were tempted by the set menu. Always the one to add a spoonful of chilli to your cornflakes, I gently suggested that they refrain from ordering it until they’d seen the rest of the menu.
I pointed out that a salmon steak is something they cook when they don’t feel like cooking, and they nodded in agreement. It is entirely possible to defrost a frozen salmon steak, cook it in the microwave and have an edible result.
Preceding that with an onion soup was not going to add drama to their afternoon either. And at €19.80, the day’s menu was offering spaghetti with lobster as a main course. We are saving a whopping 15 cents and eating lobster, I argued.
I did not mention my concern that the price made it unlikely that we were getting fresh lobster. The mention of Scottish lobster confirmed this. But I thought I’d pick lobster over a salmon steak on most days of the week ending in a ‘y’.
Seated at a table on the outermost row of tables is as close as it gets to eating on a boat. Drop a fork and you have lost it to the sandy seabed. I am not exaggerating here – one false move with my chair could easily have landed me in the sea.
With a day as gorgeous as this turned out to be, I could think of very few places that could offer such a perfect location to have lunch. I must point out that I left home at noon and made it to Xlendi just after half past two. I could have easily been in Tuscany in the same amount of time and with less grief.
The powers-that-be have diverted all traffic between my place and Xlendi, so I followed yellow diversion signs for two-and-a-half hours of practically non-stop driving. Better now than in summer, pointed out the eternal optimist from the safety of the passenger seat. Voltaire smiled, then returned to his eternal slumber.
Three out of four of us ended up ordering the spaghetti with lobster. The optimist picked the slow-cooked suckling pig. Inside I smiled smugly. That meant I would get to taste both my lobster and the very inviting pork.
It also meant I’d get to taste roast potatoes. The afternoon was going better than I’d planned it. To keep things modest, we ordered a Vermentino from Sardegna from a very well-put-together wine menu that is also exceptionally well priced.
The woman who had taken our orders delivered some really lovely fresh bread and bruschetta to keep us alive until our main courses arrived. Olive oil in little bottles that bore the restaurant name on the label probably goes down well with the tourists, and its contents made a great addition to the fresh little loaves.
The pasta made it in good time and I was very pleasantly surprised that it was indeed freshly made pasta. The spaghetti have that slightly rough texture and a boxy cross section that separates lovingly made pasta from the stuff in boxes.
Half the lobster, sliced down the middle, was served next to the tower of pasta and it quite predictably tasted like it had spent some time feeling very cold indeed before it made it to Gozo. I am happiest when a sauce served with lobster is hardly a sauce at all.
There was quite a lot going on here and, while it is not what I’d have gone for, did not spoil my enjoyment of the afternoon. I was paying less than €20 for the dish and it contained an entire lobster so I was prepared to forgive slices of boned black olive in the sauce.
The suckling pig was quite a lovely dish, with very tender pork cooked in honey, brandy and caramelised onion. A bite was all it took to make me wish for a cold winter night and a roaring fire.
The veg was really not special but the roast potatoes made up for them, being quite devilishly hard to stop devouring.
By the time we were done, the sun was almost setting between the outermost points of the little cove, making the view from our table all the more pleasant.
Just as pleasant was a bill for €25 each, not a lot to pay for having had lunch inside the holiday photo you decide to frame.
The drive back home was, for some reason, not as well sign-posted as the way to Gozo. Yet we drove back fuller of belly and hardly lighter of wallet so the combined malevolence of all those responsible for poorly signed roadworks could not wipe the smile from our faces.
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