Ed eats

Rampila
1, St John’s Cavalier Street
Valletta
Tel: 9944 1120

Food: 6/10
Service: 6/10
Ambience: 8/10
Value: 6/10
Overall: 6.5/10

There’s one thing about Michelin-starred restaurants that is often overlooked. The rating system is complex but, as you can imagine, rewards the best combinations of style, technique, inventiveness, taste, aesthetics, comfort, wine selection and so forth.

The ability to consistently perform as many of these as possible serves any star-aspiring eatery in good stead. So how about memorability?

I recall every meal I’ve had at a starred restaurant very vividly. Knowing it is starred ups the eagerness. The experience is usually such a complex one that it would be hard to forget a single thing that went on, particularly for someone whose mind is wired to favour food as a topic before it worries about trivialities like shelter and survival.

This has its downsides. Every slip the restaurant makes is seared, lightly of course, on to the inside of one’s head forever. There’s this one restaurant I visited once that was impressive in so many ways. The location was unique, the building original, and the decor simply unforgettable. The food was outstanding, as was the service.

On our way out, after paying a week’s salary in exchange for the food and experience, we sat on comfortable, leather sofas sipping a liqueur.

Just next to the sofa was an old TV, the kind that was made of fake wood on the outside, and this was playing a rather shoddy video loop of a fireplace, crackling sound and all. I was horrified. The same chef who had flown in goose liver that very week to make sure it was never frozen, whose sommelier presented us with hand-labelled wines, had thought this vile trick to be a fitting addition to his restaurant’s decor. Unfortunately, this is also something I won’t forget about the restaurant. Would I return? Well, of course I would. The rest of the evening was just perfect.

Alas, we have no starred restaurant on these hallowed islands. This makes me all the more keen to visit restaurants when a starred chef is visiting. Rampila in Valletta seemed to have something of the sort going on, with a chef from a starred restaurant in Modica cooking there for a couple of months. So I was understandably keen on visiting. The restaurant itself is quite uniquely located and this really lends itself to fine dining. I’d heard of chef Accursio Craparo before, in the context of being awarded a Michelin star quite early on in his career, and this was all the more reason to find out all about it and treat myself in the process.

The restaurant is mainly located within the vaulted tunnels of St John’s Cavalier and there’s also a lovely terrace with views over the entrance to Valletta across the ditch between bastions. It was far too cold for considering this though. I can wear a jacket to defend me from the weather but the food on my plate deserves better than to be chilled before I’ve had time to eat it.

I expect the starred chef to transport to me, to take me on a journey that is more personal and perhaps with a little more theatre

The dining set-up is quite classical, with starched, white linen, warm lighting and smartly uniformed staff. We waited for a while before anyone greeted us and, when they did, they didn’t quite get that we’d reserved a table and led us to one that happened to be vacant.

The man who came to our table first had all the appearance and a few of the manners of a maître d’ from the movies. He even tried French when offering the wine list but I didn’t quite get this. Somehow French doesn’t sound the same when spoken with a Maltese accent. He took this as an indication of my limited dining experience and described the amuse-bouche as a small course to keep us going while the chef was preparing our meal, just after he’d called it an amuse-bouche with the table next to us.

The next man to turn up did so to pour water, which he did enthusiastically, stopping just short of the brim. It felt like Downton Abbey and Fawlty Towers had kids and sent them to boarding school in Malta.

This was a recurring theme throughout the night, often with excellent timing. For antipasto we’d ordered a broad bean soup with roasted octopus and fennel. One of the men walked to our table while the other noticed we didn’t have cutlery. The soup bearer stood at table, plates in hand, while the other walked off to fetch spoons. These were laid carefully while the soup bearer bore soup for a while longer. My better half and I smiled politely to them and to each other, both of us fighting those muscles that threaten to cause a chuckle or worse.

The soup was really simple and this worked for it. There is something unbearably homely about a broad bean soup and this had an exceptional texture to it that made it all the more of a comforting liquid. It was very mildly seasoned and the fresh fennel danced around on the edge. The octopus came as a smoky and firm surprise, a strangely complementary counterpoint to the earthy soup.

This would sound like a cunning plan in the strategy of a chef who is preparing the diner for a journey. It is easy on the palate, hints at the possibility of more elegance, yet raises no wild expectations. Unfortunately, this is not the case. When I asked what the degustation menu consisted of, I was told I could pick any four items on the menu. How’s that for a journey? I could pick four desserts if I liked. There is also a six-item option if you’re up for it and the rules are the same, so feel free to turn this liberty into as indulgent a choice as you can.

Next I wanted the speciality of the chef, a duo of arancini – one filled with squid ink and the other with ragout – but they’d run out. I swapped for the ditalini with rabbit and thyme. This was also quite a simple dish. Nothing fancy is going on and the result is a simple and elegant plate of pasta that was satisfying if slightly underwhelming. The better half had gone with the Kamut pasta served with anchovy and candied orange.

This was definitely the better choice, even if she found it a little too intense. The anchovy had been flaked over the dish and had an intensity I likened to bottarga. The candied orange formed the perfect twist, adding a slight sweetness and bright, citrus notes to the otherwise savoury dish.

This was an even better path to a great meal and I couldn’t wait for the main course. As with the previous three dishes (I’m including the not-an-amuse-bouche), the timing was impeccable.

The kitchen worked like a well-oiled machine all night and the front of house kept the pace admirably. Even if occasionally comical and quite impersonal, service was always remarkably efficient.

Unfortunately, the kitchen hit a brick wall here. I’d ordered the pork neck with a soft potato crust, mushrooms and hazelnuts. The soft potato crust wasn’t so much a crust as a wrap of mash and the meat was tender.

The addition of hazelnut to the mash was interesting but did nothing to salvage an otherwise unremarkable main course. Just as drab was the Falsomagro, Sicilian roast beef in its gravy with potato purée. It did just as it said on the tin and I’m afraid this just isn’t enough at this level of expectation.

It is hard to go wrong with a creme brûlée, particularly a carob brûlée with coffee ice cream and almonds. Well, it went spectacularly wrong and when I broke through the crust it sank into a liquid gloop that had failed to set, tipping the ice cream into the mix as it went down. The warm pear tart with chocolate sauce and vanilla ice cream would have faired decently at any cafe in Valletta.

Not knowing what we were in for, we probably wouldn’t have chosen such awful sounding dishes in the first place. Writing ‘pear tart with chocolate sauce’ even feels wrong. I’d never order something of the sort at an average restaurant but we had walked in with very high expectations, so we expected a novel take on what sounded perfectly ordinary. And paying almost €70 each, we were probably right to do so.

One reaches for the stars when one wants more than a meal. I expect the starred chef to transport me, to take me on a journey that is more personal and perhaps with a little more theatre. He’d given us the milestones, in the form of very Mediterranean and occasionally inspired dishes, but he never quite took us by the hand.

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

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