Aziamendi 100
Civil Service Sports Club
113, Archbishop Street
Valletta

Tel 9990 0100

As soon as the mention of a Michelin-starred restaurant made it to the newspaper, I was all fired up. The story, however, sounded odd.

A man was incredibly lucky to escape with his life, even if disasters of biblical proportion seemed to chase him around the globe. So he decided to move to Malta and regale us with a hundred days of food concocted by the Basque chef who was awarded three stars at a restaurant in Thailand. I didn’t get the link then and I still don’t get it now.

The much-celebrated chef Eneko Atxa was here in May and, in less than a month, had converted the beautiful Civil Service Sports Club into a three-storey tribute to gastronomic indulgence. So I stopped trying to make sense of the story. If a man was deserving of three stars at some point, then I’m surely tasting what his kitchen has to offer.

It is tough at the top. Winning three stars is an incredibly arduous challenge. Keeping three stars and hanging on to your sanity seems to be just as physically and mentally taxing. Marco Pierre White, the youngest chef to be awarded three stars, famously ‘gave them back’, preferring to return to life before Michelin stars. The other enfant terrible, Ramsay, lost a couple in one year when the mysterious inspectors decided his flagship was not consistent enough for their liking.

Which brings me to the rating of this week’s column. Michelin inspectors are purportedly well-trained professionals who, in the course of a year of doing what they do, eat out around 300 times. For a restaurant to be awarded three stars, the number of mysterious visits is even higher than usual. So I humbly refrain from whacking my own rating on to this page when the pros have done what they do best.

Now in reality, three stars are awarded to the restaurant, chef and all. The stars aren’t an itinerant award that hop from place to place. In our case, they help categorise the restaurant, showing us that the chef who designed the menu and, most likely, prepared the dishes the first time, was deemed worthy of this accolade when busy running his kitchen in Thailand, ably assisted by his team of chefs. Aziamendi 100, now starting its second out of three months in Malta, has not been rated and will not be. Michelin doesn’t yet invest its resources in what are known as pop-up restaurants, even if the experience matches that provided by the originally-awarded spot.

Stars roughly translate to the amount of effort you should go through to visit a restaurant. One star means that if you’re in the city, you should visit the restaurant. Two stars show that a detour would be worth your while. Three-starred restaurants are those that are worth hopping on to a plane and travelling to, such is their impact on the planet’s gastronomy.

I quickly found myself making arrangements with a couple of gastronomic terrorists. They would gladly pay whatever it took to treat their palate to a meal that these islands very rarely purvey. They are both patient with my ways, unreasonably enthusiastic about the entire dining out experience and quite exacting with their culinary expectations. We placed our booking for three weeks into the experience. This would mean the Aziamendi team have had enough time to find their feet.

If you haven’t yet paid the place a visit and you’re serious about food, do yourself a favour and reserve a table

The Aziamendi experience starts when you call to place your reservation and delivers it in the form of eager anticipation. We turned up on the night and were led upstairs to the dining room. The building is looking great, with minimal yet deliberate and tasteful intervention. The dining area is the main hall of the building, and its imposing high ceilings have been partially obscured by fabric and lighting. From the young lady who welcomed us at the entrance to the delightful sommelier, every member of the formidable front of house team has been trained and polished until they gleam with ability to take everything we can throw at them, without so much as a falter in the stride or their smile.

Seated at the simply laid table we ordered water and specified the menu we were choosing. This is a degustation, so you get to pick between six courses or nine. The wines are matched to the courses so all you need to do is decide how much you’d like to spend on it. We picked the six-course menu, priced at €79, and the most modest flight of wines, priced at €29.

I can’t recall who it was but I recently watched an interview with a chef at a three-starred restaurant. He said: “We don’t cater for the rich. We have clients who are prepared to do without two or three meals at regular restaurants to pay for our experience.” The average price at the restaurant in question exceeded €250 per person so we’re striking quite the bargain at Aziamendi 100.

When we’d placed our order, we were asked whether we had any allergies. One of my companions turned out to be a conscientious objector to the way geese are treated when foie gras is made so he asked whether the foie gras course could be swapped for anything. Of course he could. An aubergine dish was available just in case. This tickled the fancy of my other partner in crime. I would be the only one enjoying foie gras.

Our amuse-bouche was served on a little wooden block. A ham cream and pork jowl airbag sat next to a bright green caipirinha ball. I started with the little savoury parcel and wasn’t quite prepared for the wonderful eruption of flavours, textures and temperatures that ensued. Still overwhelmed, I bit into the caipirinha ball and was treated to a palate kick-start, with a startlingly balanced lime and alcohol explosion. We looked at each other, rapt, and simply nodded contentedly. If the rest of the meal even compared to this, we were in for a night to remember.

Next up was the first item on the menu itself – a Mediterranean tartlet. I won’t go into much detail about every course because I’ll quickly run out of space on this page out of sheer enthusiasm. It will also be terrible of me to spoil all the surprises that are in store. I’ll just say that the tartlet was a tribute to umami, with Parmesan and tomato and spinach combining beautifully, and served with a rather unusual Parmesan ice cream. This was served with a local Vermentino that had a decent enough acid structure to stand up to the aged cheese but ended with a rather abrupt finish.

Next up was the foie gras. Again, I won’t go into a full description. I’ll just say that it was likely the highlight of my meal and move on to the real story here. We were served three, apparently identical, dishes. We all politely reminded the young man who was taking care of us that I was the only one eating foie gras. Of course, the aubergine substitute had been designed and executed to look identical to the foie gras. They haven’t substituted the dish with a veggie alternative. They’ve painstakingly created a meat-free doppelgänger. It was matched with a Chateau Caplan 2000 Sauternes and my mouth was the happiest it’s been for quite a while.

Next up were the squid noodles, served with a crispy squid sauce and crispy squid croquette. I wasn’t entirely convinced about the sauce, with an intensity that slightly overpowered the beautifully delicate noodle. A Sauvignon Blanc from Sicily tasted of sunshine and warmth and worked just fine. We had skimped on the wines so we deserved this.

The seared tuna, a fantastic cut, was served with white and black garlic and a chicken sauce. Once again, an outstanding and unlikely concoction that simultaneously showed technical skill, inventiveness and a highly disciplined restraint. Playing safe with the wine, we were served an oaked Chardonnay from Sicily that added a smokey butterscotch to the seared fish. Our final main course caused divergent opinions at table. I was happy with the oxtail glazed terrine and its lovely crisp exterior, served with potato purée and Thai mushroom salad with a fiery chilli kick. My companions felt this was underwhelming. We all loved the red liquid from the Etna that was served with it though.

Perhaps the least remarkable dish was the dessert course in the form of French toast soaked overnight in milk and served with milk ice cream. Yet it is delicate and curiously satisfying without pushing sweetness through the roof.

We finished off with a passion fruit bonbon coated in dark chocolate and a pumpkin flan, served with green tea. These did the same as the amuse-bouche had, providing an olfactory fireworks display that ended the experience on a high note.

After a quick drink at the rooftop bar, we smiled all the way home, thrilled to have shared a culinary experience that is hard to come by. If you haven’t yet paid the place a visit and you’re serious about food, do yourself a favour and reserve a table. After all, three stars are worth travelling for and here they are, right on our doorstep.

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