Ed eats

Str. Eat
Strait Street,
Valletta
Tel: 9921 7228

Food: 9.5/10
Service: 8/10
Ambience: 8/10
Value: 9/10
Overall: 9/10

I eat out often. Apart from the weekly trip to a restaurant I am about to review, I do my best to fit in meals at my favourite haunts.

A pair of disciplined hands are hard at work in the kitchen and the pace at which we devoured the bowl was hard evidence

As fun as it is to discover new places every week, with variety comes risk. The risk of landing inside a restaurant that makes you wish you’d stayed home.

So it is always a pleasure to return to those places where I am guaranteed to eat a fantastic meal. It won’t be long before Andrew at Salvinos asks me to stay away from his place for a month because he definitely needs a break from my ugly mug.

I think that as long as I’ve been reviewing, I have had to adjust my expectations downwards. This helps me review places as they compare to everything else that is available in the country and creates a measure that is as equitable as possible.

I have also come to expect being slightly overcharged for food andI make reasonable allowancesfor the tiny scale of our island that means every patron has to pay a little more towards the cost of running a restaurant.

While most of the country is very firmly and disappointingly in the third world, we are charged very metropolitan prices for our meals. And most other things, coming to think of it.

So it is a rare and happy moment for me to go to work in the morning and tell people that they have to go to this place I discovered, and they have to order this particular dish, and that no, it isn’t ridiculously overpriced.

It also adds a place to the limited list of restaurants I am happy to recommend to family and friends. This column, dear readers, is about one such place.

I heard of a place called ‘Street’ in Strait Street and then frantic and fruitless searches led me to figure out that it was actually called ‘Str.Eat’. I groaned at the awfully contrived name and pictured a committee of people taking seven days and seven nights to come up with the most laboured and unmemorable weak play on words imaginable.

Only Shakespeare got away with making stuff up, and that is because he knew that fourcenturies later these words would make students thank theirlucky stars that Cardenio was never found.

I popped by one night, early in the week when most other restaurants are closed. Valletta is on the way to looking better, but so far it looks like a girl at the hairdresser when she’s only half done.

Eventually, I managed to make it to Strait Street and hunted for the unluckily named place. They’ve hidden it carefully but once I made it there I loved what I saw.

For a start, the place is subtitled ‘Whisky and Bistro’. It is all beneath street level so perhaps Sub-Street could be a valid name. I bet the committee struck that off the list because it sounded more like a sandwich place.

Inside a typical Valletta cellar, the separate lounge and restaurant areas are really nicely done up, with little intervention to the original features and added bits and pieces that are functional and used to light up and cool down the place. The aesthetics made me forgive the name almost entirely.

One man was running the show that evening and, looking very much like Rodney from Only Fools and Horses, he looked uncertain about our request for a table. There was a bit of a language barrier going on. I’d spoken to Rodney in Maltese, forgetting he’s from Peckham.

When we were on the same page he lit up and showed us to the restaurant, indicating we were free to choose any table. He popped back with menus and offered drinks.

I was having a whisky at a whisky bar and asked, quite optimistically, for a whisky menu. He wasn’t fazed. He popped back to the bar and delivered a whisky menu. So far, Rodney and Str.Eat were scoring points.

He let us know that the specials that night were veal T-bone and Irish Ribeye. The menu, a rather limited one the way a proper Bistro menu should be, included a USDA ribeye so I guessed they are taking their meat seriously.

The menu didn’t come across as one seeking originality. There is a simple selection of proper food that is not trying to be artsy or novel. They are being trueto their word calling the placea bistro.

We were both sold on the meat they had for specials but wanted to start with something we could share and decided to risk the fresh mussels.

There is an option for the Moules Marinieres to be served with cream, as is customary. I liked being given an option and, because I prefer it this way, ordered mine without cream.

Rodney did not ask us how we’d like our meat cooked and I only noticed when he was walking away. I chased him, feeling stupid that I’d forgotten to mention this, and ordered both served rare. He took careful note.

I was prepared for the worst. Ordering a ribeye at a place that does not give an option of cooking temperature? Could it be we both simply forgot or will the ribeye be served cooked through and covered with Bisto? And would the mussels be an even greater risk?

Comfort came in bucketloads putting an end to my questions. An amuse bouche in the form of a small bowl of the most heart-warming pumpkin soup was served, complete with crunchy pumpkin seed and a basil oil dressing served on top.

It was spicy, with added chilli, and a bit salty, so the soup just hit all the spots at once. Had my nose been small enough to fit the diameter of the bowl I’d probably have licked it clean.

Next up were the mussels, cooked perfectly in wine, garlic, butter, plenty of fresh parsley and seasoned simply so the fresh mussels tasted like they were actually mussels.

A pair of disciplined hands are hard at work in the kitchen and the pace at which we devoured the bowl was hard evidence. I dipped my spoon into the liquid that remained and had to stop myself from picking it up and drinking from it.

Fresh bread would have been nice, both with the pumpkin soup and lapping up the liquid gold that the mussels were served in.

All the while I drank Talisker, an Isle of Skye single-malt, and somehow was determined to keep the whisky flowing throughout the meal. It is not thecommonly accepted drink to accompany mussels or steak but life is short and rules are what they are and whatever. So I stayed my course.

To help our anticipation, Rodney came back to clear our table and re-supply cutlery, providing us with a pretty impressive steak knife. As soon as he was done with pre-steak preparation, the chef turned up with our steaks.

The presentation was not quite what I expected of a bistro. Careful arrangement of colour, temperatures and symmetry made the dish look like it belonged to a fine-dining establishment.

The baby carrots gleamed and were still slightly crunchy. Baby potatoes were cut in half and baked, tasting quite lovely. I found myself trying the salad and devouring it. In the middle of the dish the steak waited patiently.

A bite was all it took for me to fall in love and I looked across the table for a reaction to the veal T-bone. I swear I saw a tear. The lady-like demeanour had gone, and the word she kept repeating to describe her reaction is unfortunately quite unprintable.

Both steaks had been grilled to the right cooking temperature, were lightly seasoned, and had retained every drop of moisture that Mother Nature had been kind enough to supply them with.

We were not going to go anywhere near dessert. Nothing was going to undo the lingering aftertaste of an excellent steak. Another Talisker then. And the bill. This turned up at a veryreasonable €65.

I climbed back to Strait Street and looked back in surprise at the unexpected treasure trove, committing the unlikely name to memory and hoping that, with consistent delivery, it can form part of that tiny list of favourites.

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