Ed eats

The Villa Brasserie
39, Main Street
Balluta Bay
St Julian’s

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

There are restaurants that end up on a list of places I want to visit and lurk there, hiding every time I rummage inside my head for a suitable dining spot. They have a life of their own, picking the shade of a more juicy target to hide behind.

I don’t quite know what it is that keeps them languishing in these recesses and out of the spotlight. I occasionally notice one lurking suspiciously and spot a long-forgotten name, one I’ve been meaning to try out but never seem to get to. Ah, I say to myself, we have a lurker. Best get this one before it hides again.

And this is roughly what happened to me with The Villa Brasserie in Balluta Bay. I think the villa itself is a beautiful piece of architecture with a magnificent view. In my dreams, I’ve somehow struck gold and have dragged enough of it to the door of whoever owns the place, begging for legal title. In my dreams, he accepts the pile of gold and I live there, sipping an espresso on the terrace at sunrise, pretending I can’t see the horrified looks of early morning joggers who notice I haven’t bothered to dress for the occasion.

Alas, I don’t own the place and have not struck gold. The least I can do is pop into the underground car park that’s conveniently adjacent to The Villa, pick the right lift from there and spend an evening inside this glorious structure. Some might say I’ve paid for the privilege of being inside and had a free meal thrown in. But that would be stretching it a little too far.

So there I finally was, the desire to do so having been around for a few years now. The interior has been done up very tastefully for the most part. One can ignore unlikely curves in certain parts of the soffit. Yet one can scarcely ignore the way a rather large room has been turned into a dining area so a bunch of tables are scattered around the centre of the room. With a venue so grand, it is worth the bother of a little jiggling about to reduce the perception of such a large space.

But The Villa has dodged this bullet by tagging ‘brasserie’ on to the end. This style of restaurant is a little less formal than the grandeur of the building would suggest so the seating arrangements suddenly fall into perspective.

The greeting is as polite as one would expect of a brasserie. This is meant to be a step up from a bistro. The latter often forgoes niceties like table linen and focuses on new dishes every day.

The mussels were quite enjoyable and had been treated to just enough cream to allow the taste of the mollusc to remain pleasantly present

A brasserie is more about staple favourites patrons return for and the menus reflect this. There is a host of rather usual dishes and no specialities are on offer. The Villa is being very true to its descriptor.

The greeting was polite but not overly formal and this was to set the standard for the service that evening. The service wasn’t personal yet every person who we interacted with knew exactly what was going on and had been very well trained. There were occasions when the service became almost comically attentive but I’ll go into this later.

An effort has been made to keep some variety flowing through the menus, with some interesting twists along the way. The starters are more imaginative than the main courses, however. Skipping past the grilled quail and Niçoise salad, there are options like a board of charcuterie or cheese and even a list of tapas.

I’d expected a few fancy pasta dishes and was thrown by the inclusion of pizza. Somehow, the menu, the service and the place itself don’t really prepare you for pizza. What they did prepare me for was the offer of chicken breast for main course. There’s a level of dining above which I find it hard to forgive chicken breast, and The Villa hovered dangerously on the boundary. Spotting chicken breast on the menu showed me which side of the fence this place sits on.

We decided to share three of the fish-based items from the tapas section and have meat for main course, just because this sort of thing is not ‘meant’ to happen.

This was going to make a mess of the wine. We finally decided to order a Sancerre, pick one pork dish and one lamb dish and share. This way, we’d each enjoy a reasonable wine match for three-quarters of our meal each.

The tapas we chose weren’t exactly what one would expect of the Spanish dish that lent this list of dishes its name. We went with moules marinière, fried squid and whitebait, the aquatic trifecta that raced ahead of most other starters.

We were served an amuse bouche of tuna dip, some lovely breadsticks and a little bowl of olives. I have to be honest that I felt a little affronted by the presence of a dip that is essentially a cop-out. The olives were nice though. There was also a basket of bread but not oil or butter, so I picked a slice and, throwing etiquette to the wind, poured some of the oil that accompanied the olives on to it.

Our starters were served quite quickly and each little bowl is quite a reasonable portion, so sharing three between two diners turned out to be just perfect. The mussels were quite enjoyable and had been treated to just enough cream to allow the taste of the mollusc to remain pleasantly present. The whitebait were unfortunately quite awful and had been fried until they were tough. Even if the squid could have been treated to a drier fry, they were guiltily enjoyable.

At this point, I made the mistake of pouring my own wine from the ice bucket that was within reach on its own little pedestal by our table. After that, every time I took a sip, the sommelier dashed to our table and poured as much wine as I’d consumed. I noticed this after a couple of takes and admit that I did, on one occasion, sip my wine just to see if he’d notice. Of course, he did and rushed to our table to rectify the situation. This level of attentiveness is sweet but can verge on the comical.

Our main courses were very well presented and the rack of lamb I’d ordered was excellent. It was served rare as I’d requested it to be and had been expertly treated to a well-executed French cut. It was tender, well-seasoned and served on top of a North African spiced couscous with the crunch of toasted pine nuts and the occasional sweetness of raisins. I seized the lion’s share of this when I noticed how much pork was served on the other plate.

The duo consisted of a braised pork cheek that was very tender but otherwise quite unassuming. The pork belly was fatty, even by pork belly standards, and this kept it packed with flavour and naturally very juicy. The presence of a very inviting square of crackling on top had me fidget in anticipation.

By the time I made it, it had lost whatever brittleness it had started with and was quite disappointingly elastic. The bit I managed to cut off tasted quite lovely but was really hard to eat. The addition of a potato purée and of apple to the dish was a nice touch.

By the end of it, we paid €50 per person, including a €30 bottle of wine. Had all the food lived up to the expectations created by the place, the price would be right.

There is a serious effort going on to serve a high standard of food and a little effort to more consistent quality would turn The Villa Brasserie into one of the places that one would be turning down reservations.

As things stand, I’ll place The Villa into my mental box labelled ‘to revisit’ and, if past performance is something to go by, it will lurk there for quite a while before I do.

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