Ed eats

I Malavoglia
83, George Borg Olivier Street,
St Julian’s
Tel 2137 7055

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

This summer, like every other summer for as long as I care to remember, I got to spend some time in Sicily. My first visit was memorable.

I was barely three years old and the ancient car we were in decided it had had enough of foreign shores.

So it coughed, it spluttered and then just planted itself firmly in the middle of the road, refusing to move another inch.

Eventually, we were rescued. Back then, I don’t suppose tow-trucks were as readily available as they are today, so we ended up on top of a car transporter. This was, to my child’s little mind, much better than meeting Father Christmas and having him tell me that he’s spending the weekend with Batman and that I was invited. Well, almost.

When we finally made it to wherever it was we were going, I ate an arancina. The outside was golden and crispy, protecting large grains of rice that had a slightly nutty texture.

The rice was, however, no more than edible bubble wrap to me. I ate away, looking forward to the core of rich meat sauce, that liquid layer of delicious protection for the inner sanctum – an almost-cubical mass of melted cheese.

I’m pretty sure my dad was upset at the whole ordeal but his reaction mattered little to me as a child. My memory is only of the car transporter and an arancina.

Since that day, I never leave Sicily without having consumed one. But there is more to food in Sicily than arancini, as three-quarters of our population surely knows. We seem to discover new eateries every time we visit.

Some are planned discoveries, based on recommendations of fellow gourmands. Others are pure serendipity. In almost every case, however, the food is nothing short of excellent and the price we pay is a fraction of what we’re used to paying just 50 miles south.

I’m especially enamoured of the places that really go overboard on the antipasto. It isn’t unusual, at this type of restaurant, for us to spend two hours over lunch, consuming one gorgeous antipasto after the other. Making it to the pasta course is a feat and I don’t think I’ve ever made it to the main course at this type of outfit.

What is consistent is the food quality and, to a certain degree, the inventiveness. While the components tend to be repeated, the number of combinations I’ve experienced is staggering.

You can imagine my anticipation when I noticed the Authentic Sicilian Food descriptor beneath the curiously named I Malavoglia in Spinola. My head was filled with the tantalising prospect of eating proper Sicilian food without having to stray from the island. The only fly in the ointment was the fact that I’ve seen the promise before and I’ve never had it fulfilled.

So it was with very neutral expectations that I approached the restaurant one Sunday night. I’ve been to the same spot a couple of times before, each when the place hosted a different restaurant, so the layout is quite familiar. A bar takes up most of the hall downstairs and the main dining area is on the first floor.

If you’re lucky (or early) enough to occupy one of the tables on the little terrace or close enough to it, you get to enjoy a nicely elevated view of the bay outside. There was one table for two available on the terrace but the air conditioning inside swung the balance.

I was prepared to view the bay from behind a glass pane if it meant that I didn’t have to put up with the sticky heat of a September evening.

Our food was served reasonably quickly and the portion was indeed quite large

A young man, polite and speaking impeccable Italian, brought menus and took our order for drinks. My guest that night isn’t too familiar with the language, so for the most part depended on my translations, many of which were accurate enough.

The assumption at restaurants run by Italians is that all Maltese people speak their language. There is a swathe of youngsters who were not subjected to poorly-dubbed TV (remember Pulp Fiction in Italian?), so few of them speak Italian.

I’m not judging the merits of speaking an additional language. I’m just pointing out that the reality being assumed will eventually grow into obsolescence.

The restaurant seems to have been conned into exclusively serving Delicata wines but thankfully has a page of wines by Cusumano, so we ordered an Insolia while we looked through the menus.

These are quite straightforward, offering a decent selection of antipasti, pasta dishes, main courses and pizza. I was happy to see that the last item on the antipasti selection is a mixed seafood platter. Could we have struck gold? At €28.50 for two, it seemed like there would be plenty to go around.

For main course, I was sold on the Scaloppine al limone, while the non-Italian speaker, happy that the menu items were translated to English, was all for the Filetto di manzo ai ferri.

When our host turned up to take our orders, he politely let us know that the antipasti platter was quite generous. I asked whether it was acceptable to order this and then order our main course afterwards, depending on whether we’d have room for it. He smiled reassuringly and agreed it would be a good idea to do so rather than waste food.

As we sat and waited for our antipasto, the restaurant gradually filled with other patrons until there wasn’t a single vacant seat in the house. To keep us happy during the wait, a lovely little plate was served for us to nibble from. Pickled veg, lovely olives and very tasty bruschetta filled me with enthusiasm for the joys yet to come. This was already a little taste of Sicily.

Our food was served reasonably quickly and the portion was indeed quite large. Our host pointed around the plate, naming the items. Octopus carpaccio, octopus salad, octopus stew, squid, prawn cocktail, prawn with lemon and mussels.

The prawn was, in fact, the tiny, shelled shrimp that I’ve only ever seen in freezer bags. Bright pink ones were served with lemon and the prawn cocktail used the same shrimp in the traditional prawn cocktail sauce. I’d obviously have preferred prawn to reconstituted shrimp but I picked at them anyway and enjoyed the dressing.

The multiple ways to octopus varied from a rather rubbery carpaccio that had been cooked, thus falling outside the perimeter of my definition of carpaccio. The stew was, however, excellent. We both thoroughly enjoyed it and had that polite fork-joust over it, pretending neither of us was having the last bit.

The mussels were also the kind you find in the depths of a freezer. Pale, shelled and tasting quite insipid, they were a splash of brine away from the tinned version you’d get at cocktail parties in the 1980s.

The squid was acceptable and by the time we’d gone through it and drank our wine, we were quite satiated and I was no longer in the mood for waiting for a main course.

The food had been decent for the price but it was nowhere near the smorgasbord that their cousins, who stuck to their island of origin, were meting out.

This felt like a diluted version, the kind that would be economically feasible in Malta where the food cost and rent are significantly higher.

We’d had a pleasant enough evening for a grand total of €46 and, judging by the happy faces of those around us who were eating proper main courses, I Malavoglia is probably worth another visit. I’ll visit again, probably when September is over, and I’ll make sure we get a table on the terrace.

This time I’m trying the meat. Or the pizza. I’ll just be sure not to expect too much of the antipasto.

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

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