Ed eats

The Italian Job
Level 3, Bay Street,
St Julian’s
Tel 2372 20227

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

Finally, winter has decided it had enough of its summer holidays. Wearing the same T-shirt in December as I wore in June is just wrong. Somehow I can’t work myself into the mood for stews and soups and roasts when the weather outside puts me in more of a barbecue mood.

This doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy eating or that I eat any less. I have a reputation and a belly to maintain. I was lucky to visit some old haunts this week and was mostly pleased with the consistency. A quick lunch with some guys ancient enough to have been in school with me turned into along and boozy affair at Da Pippo in Valletta.

We all know the drill. We’ll attempt to order food and wine and will wind up eating exactly what the genius who runs the floor wants us to eat and drink. We’ll ask for the bill and wind up spending somewhere between €40 and €50 each, regardless of what we’ve consumed or in what quantity. And we had the time of our lives.

There is something magical about that place. Describing it the way it is sounds like an incentive not to go there. Why would I want someone to impose food or wine on me? Why would I want the bill to feel so random? Yet the restaurant is jam-packed for lunch every day and reservations are something of a necessity because the formula just works.

Just as consistent is Pepe Nero at Jessie’s Bar. I visit often, usually for a quick lunch, and this week I was there with a large group that included a couple of young ones. The way we were served was exemplary, the food prompt and great all around. The value is hard to beat, too.

After a bit of a mix-up with an order at Gochi last week, I also decided to revert to an old favourite, Club Sushi. They never fail to deliver simple, inexpensive food from Japan and Korea with service that works like clockwork. I intended to walk from the cinema in St Julian’s to Club Sushi for dinner for what would surely be an enjoyable meal and found myself attracted by a large, illuminated sign on the wall at Bay Street that said ‘The Italian Job’.

I love the film (the one with Michael Caine in it) and was certain this restaurant would be something of a theme park.

Somehow I was curious and this started to get the better of me. Should I revisit a restaurant that I know will certainly lead to a good meal or should I venture into the unknown. An unknown, I must add, that included what I’d just dismissed as a theme park.

I voiced my thoughts with the better half who pondered for a second or two and then threw one of my favourite expressions back at me. “Live dangerously,” quoth she, cruelly. So off to The Italian Job we headed.

Once the team settle in and get their act together, this place could be a good example of how to turn a very commercial eatery into one that actually serves up a good meal

It’s on the upper level of a shopping complex I already consider too busy and packed with humans, a species I’m not entirely comfortable interacting with. Luckily it was a little late in the day so the throngs had thinned and we had no problems finding a table. I opted for a table inside, mainly because I wasn’t in the mood for having my table used as a roundabout.

Whoever is running the place has gone the whole hog and spent money on having every inch of the place designed and built with great care. They’ve tried to put everything in there so there’s an area that uses bits of moped as seating, another area with a huge mural on tiles and seating in comfortable-looking booths, a lounge and bar area that looks different again, and seating across the areas is at different heights as well.

I might have gone for a more unified look and feel but this is entirely subjective – what matters is that plenty of effort has gone into the restaurant and it pays off in the form of an attractive, welcoming, and functional space.

We were met by a confident young lady who, with efficiency and a polite smile, made sure we settled in at a table we liked and returned with menus. We had a look through and, unsurprisingly, the menu contains no surprises.

It is one of those seemingly endless lists that go through antipasti, starters, pasta dishes, grills, pizza, and desserts with little effort to introduce novelty. They’re catering for large numbers and have, quite cleverly, picked familiarity over novelty.

Choosing pizza and pasta was too easy so I ran through the menu again, looking for something a little more inspiring. There is a flank of beef in there, an 800 gram behemoth that serves two, and I mentioned this to the better half. She’d put a lioness to shame when it comes to devouring meat so this took no convincing at all.

Even if the portion size sounded gigantic, I was hungry enough to consider a couple of starters to get things going. A beef carpaccio would be a perfect way to ramp up the approach to the steak. I added fried calamari because, when done properly, they’re a sinful pleasure. We’d chosen our food but placing an order turned out to be quite the chore.

The staff are evidently unacquainted with what seems to be a shiny, new restaurant. They crossed paths, asked each other questions, rushed around the place, and accomplished less than they should have.

The bottle of still water we’d ordered as we were seated never made it to our table and a couple of times one of the team members hovered around our table with someone else’s food, trying to figure out where to deliver it.

When we managed to attract the attention of one of the young ladies to take our order she zipped to our table and did so, politely and efficiently. On an individual level, every person we dealt with was helpful and friendly. Getting them to work as a team needs a bit more effort though.

Our humble bottle of red wine was served with as little flourish as it deserved and our starters were delivered within a very reasonable time. I expected the worst, particularly of the calamari, but they were surprisingly well prepared. I expected those identical rings of rubber that seem to be synonymous with fried quid and was pleasantly surprised that the fry is a very dry one and the squid tasted lovely, as did the house sauce on the side.

Just as well put together was the beef carpaccio, thinly sliced and with plenty of grana to go with it. It is encouraging to be served proper food when expecting to be treated to the homogeneously insulting gruel that most ‘themed’ restaurants seem to settle for.

Our steak was huge and served rare as we’d asked it to be. I tried to figure out the most equitable way of sharing this huge slab of grilled cow and quickly realised that this was not going to be an issue. We tried hard and ate as much as we felt comfortable eating, leaving a third of the meat behind. I did take the time to nibble at the chips and these were probably the only disappointing part of the meal.

We ended up paying €60 for the lot, quite a steal considering the sheer quantity of decent food we’d eaten. I’m not a fan of malls and neither am I a fan of themed restaurants. Luckily, neither of these factors managed to get in the way of what was a perfectly enjoyable meal that we paid a very fair price for.

Once the team settle in and get their act together, this place could be a good example of how to turn a very commercial eatery into one that actually serves up a good meal.

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