Ed eats

Zest
Hotel Juliani
12 St George’s Road
St Julian’s
Tel: 21387 6000

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

You will notice that the rating this week doesn’t include ambience. Well that’s because I wouldn’t be nasty enough to rate the ambience of my friend’s living room lest he finds out what I really think about it.

The variety of flavours and textures had us as happy as a puppy with two tails

This week’s meal was something of an experiment. I understand that take-out food is part of everyone’s dining experience at some point or another.

You might want to get out of cooking duties for the night and pick something up on the way home.

Or you might be stuck for a babysitter but still crave that Indian food that you can’t for the life of you figure out how to cook. Most times, however, we tend to compromise when ordering take-out.

The concept of fine dining seems to include the fine dining experience and that includes service, a great wine menu, a sommelier who understands me despite my inability to remember the name of the wine I feel like, and the general feeling of being treated like royalty without having to bother about washing the dishes at the end of it all.

The experiment involved taking as much fine dining as I could to a friend’s house. He loves good food as much as I do but is confined to restricted quarters as he nurses his health back to where it should be.

He is not one to spend any amount of time indoors or idle and had reached dangerous boredom levels.

I called him in the morning and his despondency was palpable. I just hoped he wouldn’t pick up a volleyball, name it Wilson, and have a conversation with it.

I am notoriously poor at human interaction so I presume that whatever will cheer me up will work for others. Food, I logically presumed, is the answer, even if I wasn’t sure what the question was.

The next step was to choose food that would be good enough to cheer up the poor bloke without me having to cart him to a restaurant. I know he loves sushi and, as a result, is very familiar with the better sources of take-out sushi. What could I do that would be a bit different?

As I dug through the dusty backroads of my memory, a name crept into the foreground, shimmering like a mirage through the barren desert of my forgetfulness. Zest. The place where East meets West. A catchy tagline had saved the day.

So I called them up and asked about the possibility of ordering take-out. The last time I’d been to Zest, long ago, I remember little of the food but I recall having a fantastic experience. Would they allow anyone to enjoy the food without the Zest experience? Turns out they’re happy to do so and they made the ordering process over the phone very easy.

I asked for a couple of main courses and sushi to start with. The man at the end of the line ventured, “How about beef teppanyaki and a prawn curry?” I was sold.

Before he had time to offer any more food I just said I’d take both and wanted sushi and sashimi for starters. He reassured me, saying I should leave it all to him and that my food would be ready within half an hour.

Twenty-nine minutes later I was quickly climbing the stairs to the restaurant, that commands first floor views of Spinola Bay and that offers a few tables on the terrace in summer, all worth booking well in advance.

A very smart, young man at the bar greeted me and I said I was there for take-out. He pointed towards two paper bags and I asked which one. Both, he told me, were mine. The cold dishes and the warm dishes would ruin each other’s temperature so he had separated them.

Each bag had a delightful little ribbon, tied in a bow, keeping the handles together and holding something that looked more like a gift tag than anything I could think of. My food had been gift-wrapped.

I paid €68 for the lot and walked out. On my way I was assisted by the manager who introduced himself as Allan, gave me his card, said he’d taken my order on the phone and that I could consult their website next time to make the process easier. I felt quite dumb.

Down the stairs I treaded much more gingerly, the spring in my step as I climbed now swapped for a hushed reverence for the bags in hand.

Just as delicately I placed them next to me in the car and tried to drive across a third of our island without causing major damage.

As I hopped, skipped, jumped and rattled my way through war-damaged surfaces that pass as main roads, I wondered why I hadn’t yet emigrated to a country that had made it out of the third world. With this cheerful thought, I cursed all the way to my friend’s house.

The gift wrap served its purpose, the eye-candy inducing that raised eyebrow of expectation. I unwrapped and served the sushi first, all laid out with meti-culous precision and an obsessive attention to detail.

The tuna and salmon sashimi was fresh, cut into identical oblongs that are thick enough to allow a perception of texture and broad enough to let the full flavour emerge.

We next moved onto the sushi itself, a variety of maki and nigiri that once again included salmon and tuna but also prawn and sea bass and other similar citizens of the sea.

It was once again prepared with scrupulous devotion and the variety of flavours and textures had us as happy as a puppy with two tails.

The bag of sushi had one last surprise in store. A little clear plastic bag contained a variety of petit fours – little cubes of cake and macaroons – with the top of the little bag gathered and tied with yet another ribbon. We set this aside for later. Once again Zest had taken a long stride ahead of the typical take-out.

We moved on to the main courses and had two containers of rice. One was plain boiled and the other with a fabulous fried rice. Yet another two containers bore the curry and the teppanyaki.

I wasn’t overly impressed with the teppanyaki and I suspect this was a combined error of my enthusiasm and that of Allan. Teppanyaki tastes best when it has just been served. While the flavour of the sticky sauce was fine, the meat had unfortunately lost quite a bit of its texture.

The prawn curry was just lovely, with a coconut base and a definite Thai bias, rich in lemongrass, chilli and coriander with a generous dash of lime.

The sauce itself is not as thick as it could have been and this had us launch into an entertaining series of chopstick gymnastics.

By the time we got to our little bag of treats we hardly had space for a macaroon. The portions were all generous and very enjoyable so we left very little behind.

I am never quite sure whether it is good food or good cheer that does the trick but the man who’d been quietly convalescing looked positively upbeat by the end of it.

We agreed we’d pop by for the full experience as soon as he’s given the green light to head outdoors. If Zest hadn’t compromised on the take-out, the restaurant experience must be as outstanding as I recall it to be.

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