Ed eats
Times Gone By
14, Sliema Road,
Gżira
Tel 9922 4200
Food: 6/10
Service: 9/10
Ambience: 5/10
Value: 8/10
Overall: 7/10
This week is a special one for a certain class of geek. Apple announced their software plans for the year and a big event in gaming starts tomorrow. Both events show how the technology we use will take shape, and this pretty much means that our lives will change ever so slightly.
If you’re used to a feature and a new or improved one is released, you’ll be adapting slightly. If you use a smartphone today, you’re used to tapping away at your screen. A decade ago you had adapted to pressing buttons on your phone. A decade before that, you didn’t think you’d be holding a very powerful computer in your pocket, one that happens to have an app that allows you to place calls.
What we saw last week and what we should be seeing next week, however, will be some convincing storytellers: people who take a very technical feature and translate it into a benefit that we suddenly realise we can’t live without. Your new phone will allow you to do something new. A week later, you’ll hardly remember life without that something new.
The more human and more convincing the story, the more awesome it will sound. When the big G announced that they’d be putting new satellites all over the place, the world didn’t notice. When Apple announced a few new fonts and colours, many more people declared their love and shared the story. They did so with such flourish and drama. They made it seem like we’d needed this all our lives. Maybe it is because colours and fonts are something we can see and use while satellites are too far removed from view for real people to notice. The delivery does make a huge difference, though.
So, as usual, the world discriminates in favour of the articulate and the clear explanation of benefits to humans. And it continues to ignore the introverts and the geniuses who keep their mouths shut.
All this is a summary of a conversation I had over lunch this week. It was a conversation that was bound to happen because I was meeting another person who is as enthusiastic about technology as he is about the behaviour of parasitic bipeds we call humans. Even though it was bound to happen, the conversation had an unlikely igniter.
We were meeting for lunch and had no venue planned, so we thought we’d find a point that was roughly half-way between our offices. With the help of online maps I wound up in a schoolyard somewhere. This would be inappropriate, so I shifted the marker ever so slightly and ended up at a set of crossroads in Msida. Times Gone By is right there, I thought. I hadn’t been since my days as a student, and that is a very long time ago.
I imagined the look on my victim’s face when I mentioned where we were meeting. He was unfazed, however, and we walked into the little restaurant. The walls are lined with echoes of the memorabilia trading place this once was. I’m not sure whether this is still going on, but there was nothing to indicate that trading was an active pursuit and there was nothing on the shelves I was particularly interested in. Well, there was a toy robot I liked, but I wasn’t about to ask how much it cost.
The young man who was running the place rushed towards us as we sat, beaming proudly. He looked genuinely happy to see us and offered to bring drinks while we perused the menus. He asked if it was our first time there, offered to help with the menus, told us he was going to return with our drinks, and vanished.
The man is keen. He was posit-ively bubbling with enthusiasm. Victim and I looked at each other and smiled. We liked the man’s drive.
The food selection is interesting enough to keep lunch varied upon successive visits, and there is a number of healthy options. The pasta dishes are even offered in two sizes for those who want the comfort without over-eating. Salads, grilled meats and fun in the form of burgers just about wrap things up.
The food selection is interesting enough to keep lunch varied, with healthy options
Our host brought our water over and I said I was sort of contemplating pasta while the victim said he was eyeing the Teryaki beef skewers. We weren’t exactly ordering. His helpful presence sort of egged us on into discussing a menu of what was essentially a simple list of meals. He sprang into action, praising all the food and making reference to a couple of items in particular.
The victim was undecided about picking a salad or just going with the Teryaki. Ever ready to assist, our man suggested the grilled beef skewers, because they were served with a salad. I was now hovering around spaghetti with meat balls. Everything is wrong about spaghetti with meatballs, yet the prospect of seeing this dish on a menu was too tempting to abandon. I sort of suggested this to our host and he was very pleased. He proudly stated that they only used fresh beef to make their meatballs, that the sauce was lovely, and that this was an excellent choice. How could I refuse?
Back to our conversation and its unlikely fire-starter. What started it was the young man’s absolute belief in his product, the way he made us feel proud of our choice even before we’d tried the food. Had he been on a stage with a million people watching around the world, his spaghetti with meatballs would have been the biggest release since man discovered that cows are edible. He would have been applauded by 6,000 chefs in the audience. In this case, we remained the only two people in the restaurant until the time we left.
We spoke to him for a minute at one point and he let us know that should we like to return in the evening, they serve food until around 9pm, at which point the place turns into a bar, with drinks at reasonable prices. We must really give off an aura of stingy drunks. Or perhaps he was just being helpful.
Within a reasonable time, our food was served with a flourish. My spaghetti was arranged in a neat pile in the centre of the plate, with half a dozen generously-sized meatballs forming bovine foothills around it. The sauce was a simple tomato sauce, with plenty of onion. They’ve skimped on the pasta quality but it was cooked properly, and the meatballs were pretty decent. The dish isn’t ever going to win awards, but it did the trick.
The grilled skewers looked altogether more appetising, served on top of a little salad, a smidgen of couscous, and plenty of yummy-looking potato wedges. The victim is quite the gourmand and he seemed satisfied. He spoke, he ate, he occasionally did both at once, and never complained. By the end of it I asked what he thought and he just said he’d be back. That’s quite enough as an opinion. He did leave most of his potatoes, though.
This was picked up by our host. He asked if we’d liked our food and whether there was anything wrong with the potatoes. Those aren’t store-bought, he explained. They make their own wedges. I think we’d injured his pride by sending some food back, such is his fierce love for the product.
We ordered coffee and he was back with a couple of espressos on the double. When we asked for the bill, he pointed out that he’d charged for food and water but not for the coffee. This was his treat because it was the first time he’d seen us.
The bill of €15 for the lot wasn’t even worth arguing about. As we walked to the car we realised that the earnest delivery was the largest component of our experience. The food was perfectly acceptable, the price very reasonable and we’d enjoyed the time we spent in there. It might be time to remove some of the less interesting items on the shelves though, and focus on times yet to come.
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