Ed eats

L’Chaim
Qawra Road
Qawra
Tel: 7923 3213

Food: 7/10
Service: 8/10
Ambience: 6/10
Value: 6/10
Overall: 7/10

Eating around the country makes us realise that our gastronomy is limited to a very shallow representation of the world’s culinary spectrum. This is understandable. Had we been a sprawling, multicultural metropolis the situation would be radically different.

If I ever turn to Judaism, I know my dining options are covered

As things stand, we are lucky enough to have a smattering of the more popular and best-exported kitchens.

Anyone who has travelled to locations that aren’t on the most obvious tourist trails will know that as soon as one steps beyond the boundaries of a city, restaurateurs ditch the desire to taint their food with foreign influence and stick to whatever is traditional in that country... with the exception of Irish pubs and Chinese restaurants. These infiltrate the most stubborn of little towns. Kebab places are rapidly catching up, as well.

Watching food channels on TV is almost depressing. There’s always a programme about some lucky guy who gets to travel across a continent, eat as much as he can, and get paid for it. What’s depressing is that not one of the episodes and not one of the programmes ever covers the same food twice.

Then there is the incredible output of American TV channels that really shows how multicultural the continent is. At any point during the day, someone is cooking food from some far-flung country on the other side of the globe, using ingredients conveniently purchased at a supermarket down the road.

They chop vegetables that I’ve never heard of, skin animals that have been extinct for a couple of decades, grind spices that are possibly illegal, and add a pinch of kosher salt. What is it with kosher salt? Why does everyone on every American show use kosher salt? Does it taste different, or is everyone Jewish?

And as long as I keep watching these shows, I have to keep guessing what kosher salt tastes like. Until now, that is. I’ve tasted it and it is very salty. No surprises then.

I was at a comedy show a couple of weekends ago and as I walked to the car, still chuckling about a comedian who had a go at this very newspaper, I spotted a restaurant that I’d never seen before. I couldn’t for the life of me decide how to pronounce the name.

Some text in Hebrew beneath the main sign pointed in the direction of this place being quite kosher, so I figured I’d give it a shot at some point. Then I headed home and the thought languished in some dark recess of my head for a few days.

Just when the thought was reaching its expiry date, I received a text message from someone to whom food is as important as shoes. She considers both more important than oxygen, so, as you can imagine, I value her opinion.

The text was cryptic. It basically said that she’d spotted a place she’d never been to and knew absolutely nothing about. It was in Qawra and I was allowed ‘no snooping’. My reply, to her wrath, was: ‘The kosher place?’

The restaurant is part of the block that houses the Dolmen Hotel and has seen several guises since it opened to the public. I had hazy memories of pyramids of shooter glasses on the bar and girls dressed as Daisy Duke, but decades have passed and the place is decidedly less decadent.

Wood floors and furniture have remained, as has the large central bar, so there is little by way of décor to identify the theme. There are even a couple of booths with garish leopard-print upholstery from one of the place’s iterations.

Maybe the restaurant dims the lights after dinner service and turns into a club serving kosher wine, but judging by my assessment of the tourist population of a Buġibba summer I can’t imagine this would pack the bar.

The menus are a simple affair in laminated card – a single sheet printed on both sides does the trick – and there is a set menu going on. You’re instructed to pick a salad each from two lists, a main course, and two sides. Dessert and water are included.

I asked for the kosher wine list, presuming there would be one, and they serve half a dozen wines, mainly Italian.

The menu items surprised me for a moment. I’d expected to see a long list of unfamiliar items but this wasn’t the case. The main courses include Chinese Stir-Fried Chicken and Chicken Bites in Teryaki Sauce.

I figured that if one is trying to observe a strict kosher diet, then it would be nice to enjoy a variety of dishes that you know have been prepared in accordance with Jewish dietary laws.

We tried to pick food we hadn’t heard of. Nish Nush salad and Matbuha would be two of our starters, along with Israeli Salad and Vegetarian Leaver Dip.

I wondered what the latter was. Could it be a dip made out of someone who left a vegetarian?

The young man who took our orders was probably the star of the evening. He had committed most of the menu to memory, so when we asked him about a dish, he recited it faithfully.

When I tried for more detail he was wonderfully honest. He works at the bar in the hotel and admitted that it was his first night on the job at L’Chaim, asking whether it would be OK to pop back to the kitchen for more information.

I love this attitude. He was honest, disarmingly cheerful, helpful and never tried to make stuff up. He treated us to this mixture of honesty and good humour throughout the meal, helping us through words we couldn’t pronounce even if he’d just learned them himself.

It turned out that the Vegetarian Leaver Salad had left the building, so we swapped that for a piquant red eggplant dip. For main course we both chose the Israeli Schnitzel and baked potatoes, adding a pasta dish each because it seemed like the way to go. We also wanted to try the intriguingly named The Mystery Rice, but once again our young man had to look contrite and let us know it was not available.

He offered the mystery without the rice and joined us when we laughed. And when he walked to the kitchen we argued over which one of us would employ him should we ever have our own restaurant.

The dips and salads were served within minutes, along with warm loaves of bread that had been recently baked. While the loaves are in the shape of a bun they seem to be made in the way bagels are, and this made the slightly dense dough a perfect match to the dips.

The piquant eggplant was only very slightly spicy, resembling a typical caponata more than anything. The Matbuha was much hotter, made of tomato, peppers and plenty of garlic. The Nish Nush salad was essentially a cucumber and tomato salad that was diced into tiny cubes and very, very fresh while the Israeli Salad is a salad as we know it along with bits of what I presumed were matzo.

Following this, our main courses were served with the Schnitzel, potatoes and pasta on the same dish. The practice of serving a cold pasta salad alongside a warm main course is not one we’re entirely familiar with, and my Creamed Pasta in Roze Sauce was a bit too sweet for my liking.

The Schnitzel was naturally made with koshered chicken, so it had been treated to plenty of the kosher salt I’ve heard so much about on TV. This makes it quite tender and very salty. I suppose this is an acquired taste and I acquired the taste halfway through the Schnitzel, eating the other half quite happily.

While we hadn’t ordered dessert, apple pie was served as it was part of our €24 set menu. It was quite nice and had been prepared in-house rather than commercially, so we enjoyed it while we finished off our bottle of kosher Chianti.

I’d normally not have chosen to pay €35 per person for a salad and a Schnitzel. And yet the food was good, the company was great, the service was fun, and if I ever turn to Judaism, I know my dining options are covered.

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