Ed eats

Gastro Bar
Tigné Point
Sliema
Tel: 2060 3335

Food: 6/10
Service: 9/10
Ambience: 8/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 7/10

So there’s this word that sends shivers down my spine when applied to restaurants. The word puts fear inside me – it fills me with certainty that I’m about to experience a whole lot of excuses for an inadequate kitchen. The word is ‘concept’, and is used in a way that indicates that the idea is brand new.

For starters, unless you really have a novel concept, please don’t pretend you’ve invented anything new. For main course, please do not use the word concept to mean theme. And for dessert, don’t ever put your concept ahead of your food or experience.

Think about menus where the entire first page is dedicated to explaining the concept behind the restaurant you’re in. If a concept works and is applied well and consistently, then surely it does not require a page to explaining it. I should walk in, experience your novel notion and walk out enthralled, vowing to return.

If you’ve driven around the Sliema and St Julian’s area last month, you’d have seen adverts on bus stops that introduced us to what looked like The Chophouse under a new guise. I’ve been to The Chophouse a couple of times and the service was great. I was never impressed with the steak but the view and the service made up for the slight shortcomings in that department. I wondered why they would have changed the formula and decided to pop by and find out what was going on.

I was quite intrigued because the new place promised to be a ‘gastro bar’. Now you’ve probably heard the term gastro pub. It was awfully hip a few years ago, especially when the Queen’s green islands discovered there was more to food than a fry-up and combined that with their intractable desire for fine tipple. A fine concept if there ever was one. And that word, even as I said it, terrified me. What if it was, in fact, another one of those? And why did it take a decade to hit our shores, especially since the wave of wine bars seemed to have replaced the whole notion altogether?

So I picked a weeknight, thinking that if the execution had been successful, there wouldn’t be room to swing a cat on the weekends. Not that I normally swing cats at gastro bars. No cats are ever harmed in the writing of this column.

Parking is easy thanks to the massively labyrinthine car park that the entire complex benefits from. I also seem to have parked at the right level, because I simply followed a clearly signposted path, stepped into a lift and, as if by magic, straight into the belly of the restaurant.

We were met at the door by the maitre d’. He is proper, polite, efficient and everything you could possibly wish for in a man running the show. He said there would be a lovely table available within a couple of minutes and asked us to wait. He dashed off, made sure it was being taken care of and dashed back.

Being a gastro bar, I’d expected there to be an attempt to shove a drink down my protesting throat. There was none of that. The bar was there but it looked like it was purely reserved for serving drinks to the tables.

It is quite easy to spot what’s been done. The first question we were asked was whether we were there for The Chophouse or for the Gastro Bar. I said it would be the latter and asked what the difference was. The short answer is basically a cheaper menu. So much for novelty.

True to the promise, two minutes later we were guided to a table that enjoyed a breathtaking view of Valletta, Manoel Island and a sliver of Sliema.

A young man took over and he was the star of the evening. He was polite, efficient, never overly friendly, never too formal, and always attentive. He knew the menu well enough to answer questions we fired at him and gave us all the time and space we needed.

The menus are actually quite interesting. There is a selection of antipasti and tapas and a few main courses. Every item sounds like fun and I found myself wanting to try practically everything. We then whittled this down to a couple of starters to share and a main course each.

The daube de boeuf, served with carrots on top for a flash of colour, was quite lovely. It won very high praise from a very picky, and quite accomplished, lover of braising and slow cooking

For starters, we went with the Salsiccia Calabrese, curiously referred to as a ‘local’ pork sausage that’s been dry-aged and the battered brain fritters, mainly because these are relatively hard to come by.

The main courses are heavy on burgers and grills and chuck in a striploin to make sure they’re not competing with their flagship that’s under the same roof.

I picked the Aberdeener because it is the essence of burger, served with caramelised onion, a house dressing and optional Brie. Of course, I’ll be having the Brie. The better half went with the daube de boeuf, a braised shin of beef served in its own gravy.

The wine list is that of The Chophouse, so it is extensive, well curated and quite pricey. There is no mention of speciality beers, ciders or anything else that could help with the gastro bar claim. By the time I’d decided, a dear friend who I hadn’t spotted on my way in sent a lovely bottle of wine to the table. What he doesn’t know about wine is probably not worth knowing so we were in for quite the treat. Thanks again, kind sir.

Our starters were served quite quickly and I dipped into the fritters first since the sausage is served cold. The batter was quite accomplished and the texture very pleasant, but brain doesn’t take kindly to freezing, which is why it is hardly ever on the menu unless the restaurant caters for daily specials. It was good but not as great as brain should be.

The sausage was also underwhelming. Well cured, with a hint of fennel and a half-hearted touch of chilli, this is a very polite version of the sausage Calabria is known for. I’d have simply called it dry-aged sausage, and that would not raise any expectations.

After what seemed like a perfectly reasonable wait for our main courses, the young man who had been taking care of us all evening popped by to apologise for the slight delay. He explained that the kitchen was unusually busy and needed another couple of minutes. The level of this man’s attention is spot on. Let’s hope he trains the rest of the staff, because an army of people like him would make for seamless delivery every night of the week.

Our main course was served perhaps 10 minutes later, giving us time to enjoy the lovely wine and the unspoilt view of the sea and the sleepy city across it. The daube de boeuf, served with carrots on top for a flash of colour, was quite lovely. It won very high praise from a very picky, and quite accomplished, lover of braising and slow cooking. I tasted it and the texture was perfect, even if I didn’t care much for the overwhelming gravy.

My burger was quite underwhelming. It looked like a patty had been placed inside two halves of a burger bun with nothing else added. There was a smidgen of caramelised onion and a bit of melted Brie, so I took the side salad and popped as much as I could into the burger.

The patty was lean and minced more than once, ruining the possibility of a burger that lived up to the description on the menu. Lean beef is fine if you’re watching your fat intake but makes for an overly healthy burger. This might be perfect for some but at a gastro bar I expect burger perfection. I imagine a patty made of a single-mince blend of brisket and chuck, dry- aged first and rolled along the mince, before being cut into patties. These end up with mince in a single direction, perpendicular to your bite. Perfect burgers are worth the effort.

We paid €25 each for the food and walked back to the car, grateful for the cover on what was a very windy evening. The idea of having a gastro bar with this location, convenient parking and interesting menu is great.

The execution, however, feels like they’re still working out the details. Get the bar going, dear gastro bar, and get the burger up to scratch. With the location and the service all set, this could easily be the place beat.

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

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