Ed eats

Shoreditch
43, Wilġa Street,
Paceville
Tel: 2128 6748

Food: 7/10
Service: 6/10
Ambience: 6/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 6.5/10

I’ve had quite a week of dining out, one filled with coincidence and moments of gastronomic happiness, so I ought to share a couple of the better moments. Most of the restaurants I wound up eating at were ones I’d reviewed relatively recently, so they don’t warrant an entire page to themselves.

The first coincidence was my having lunch and dinner at two restaurants that are separated by a few inches of concrete. Lunch at the beautifully designed and impeccably located Meat & Co was, once again, a treat.

I opted for the sirloin from the Italian scottona and loved every bit of the lean, firm meat. I picked this cut because I’ve eaten far too much rib-eye and wanted something with a little more bite, and the sirloin from the heifer is unusually rewarding.

Perhaps more spectacular was dinner at Dolce Vita, just one floor above Meat & Co. There were 12 of us at table this time, celebrating a happy moment for all of us, and the guys at Dolce Vita know exactly what it takes to turn a meal into an experience.

A young man got us all going to a rocking start, taking our order for drinks based on our individual preferences and serving up cocktails with remarkable imagination. Mine wound up including ginger and rosemary when I said I didn’t want anything sweet and I could have drunk that all night had the sommelier not stepped in and discussed wine with such passion that I was quickly persuaded to stop at just two of the cocktails.

If you’ve been to Dolce Vita, you know that it is hard to go wrong with their kitchen and 12 happy people ate and ate, with the twinkling lights of the bay beneath us as a picturesque backdrop.

Vastly simpler and yet very rewarding was my second venture to M’Addubbai in Birkirkara for lunch. The place has gained popularity, no doubt the result of even more people trying out their pizza and loving it.

I chose one that was quite laden with ingredients for the second time, so I need to go there a third time and try a really simple one, for that is the way to really assess the quality. It also means a certainty that lunch will be a highlight of my day, so I’ll return in the name of science and a happy stomach.

This led me to the place that is the subject of today’s column. While eating my pizza at the office, I launched one of my tiresome monologues about food and one of my colleagues found herself cornered and forced to listen. I explained that pizza and other kinds of food prepared relatively quickly have the stigma associated with fast food when they really don’t deserve it.

Few foods deliver a gastronomic hug like a good pizza or an interesting burger. She asked if I’d been to Shoreditch and I said it had been a while. Then she explained that she wasn’t referring to the district in East London. There’s a ‘British restaurant’ in Paceville that goes by that name and they serve a decent burger, she explained.

So I happened to be in St Julian’s at lunchtime one day last week and, when my growling stomach started to drown out the traffic sounds, I drove into Paceville and walked straight to Shoreditch. The place had been done up in character, with clay brick, natural wood and exposed ceiling services trying to take the place out of the centre of Paceville and towards East London.

I sat at a table on the terrace and was immediately approached by a young man, keen to take my order. He then realised that I hadn’t been there long enough to locate the menu, so he politely said he’d be back in a while. The menu starts with breakfast and moves through sandwiches, salads and wraps before getting to the more serious part. This area has a list of hamburgers that get increasingly complex and then goes on to hot dogs and fish and chips.

I figured I’d try the East London Special. Apparently, in this part of the world, a burger includes pickle, cheddar, bacon and a Shoreditch sauce. I placed my order with the young man who’d greeted me earlier and who was evidently not Maltese nor from Shoreditch.

I guessed Spanish but this didn’t matter because he spoke excellent English and was helpful and friendly, so I appreciated his having travelled all the way from home to perform his craft with enthusiasm and competence.

My food was with me within a perfectly reasonable time and the burger was huge. I’d picked the 200g patty, with the choice of a 280g one being out of the question. They’d run out of the bigger ones and admitting this shows they have no ability to prepare patties there and then. The better burger places, like Ryan’s and New York Best, prepare their burgers on site, usually there and then, and this is reflected in the quality.

The burger was served open and with crisp bacon, a thick slice of cheddar that was melting beautifully, pickles and fried onion on top of the patty. The other half of the bun had all the components of the salad.

I made a valiant effort at assembling all this into one burger and wound up with a tower as high as a pint glass. I pushed and squished and shoved until I managed to bite into this behemoth.

The ingredients are fresh, the sauce surprisingly tasty and a pretty decent patty wraps up this most daunting of sandwiches. I made sure everything dripped on to my skinny and crisp chips, so that I’d return to the flavour when eating the chips.

I ordered an espresso, a pretty decent one at that, to help keep me awake while driving back to the office and paid €12 for the lot. I had time to think, sitting there alone, and figured that this place is perfect for a lads night out. Meet there, fill all bellies with tasty and greasy food, then hit the town if you can still find a bar between the strip clubs. If you’re still out when the sun rises, return for breakfast. And if you’re hungry halfway between these meals, turn up a little drunk and convince the chef to batter a Mars bar and deep-fry it.

As fish and chips go, this is up there with better fare. The fry is quite dry, the batter light and airy and the fish tender

So just when this should all have wrapped up, I decided to dig a little deeper. I returned that evening, better half in tow. I explained that our dining experiences should be peppered with honest-to-goodness lad food for mental, spiritual and dietary balance. So ludicrous was my approach to conviction that she joined purely because she thought there was more to the story.

Indeed there was. This time I ordered fish and chips. I wasn’t going out on the lash because my ageing body can’t handle that sort of thing midweek anymore, but I was keen on getting a taste of what one were to experience should one want to start one’s boozy evening with London’s finest fry.

Sticking to stereotypes, she ordered a salad. While we waited for our food I popped into the gents and on my way back peeked into the kitchen. The chef was busy dipping a fish fillet into batter. I was filled with joy because this meant they put more effort into their fish than they do with the beef patties. The result was rewarding. As fish and chips go, this is up there with better fare. The fry is quite dry, the batter light and airy and the fish tender. I started to wish I’d been there on a Friday because this just begs for a few more pints as dessert.

The salad was rather boring but the mozzarella was lovely and fresh and there was a generous amount of cured ham to go with it, so it wound up being as filling and refreshing as it should have been.

Let’s face it – there are some interesting dining options in this area of St Julian’s with gems like Chapter One less than a minute away. But there are those evenings, particularly out with a group of friends hell-bent on mayhem, that ought to start with proper lad food. And Shoreditch, pretentious as it tries to sound, does all that and more.

I’ve been cheekily sexist this time. Feel free to swap ‘lads’ with whatever word you prefer if this kind of jest offends you.

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