Ed eats

Rocksalt
18, Tigné Seafront
Sliema
Tel: 2133 6226

Food: 4/10
Service: 7/10
Ambience: 8/10
Value: 5/10
Overall: 6/10

Try as we might, we can’t shake our evolutionary pathway. We remain, essentially, self-aware mammals. Nature has its way of keeping us on the straight and narrow when survival is concerned because, after all, what matters is propagation of the species.

This might sound bizarre in the greater scheme of things because we are probably the most dangerous parasite on the planet and are heading towards being candidates for a Darwin award. Pity there will be no one to shake their heads in disbelief when we finally destroy ourselves. The irony amuses me.

Knowing how we work as a species, however, can be very useful. Take advertising, for instance. If I drive past a billboard for a particular brand of laundry powder but have never had to buy any myself, I will ignore it. Yet, the first time I find myself needing the product, I’ll stare at a shelf of similar packets of the stuff and pick the one that seems familiar. And the familiar one is the one on the billboard that I think I’ve ignored all month.

This makes sense to us storytelling apes. Familiar is safe and we tend to choose in favour of security. So to paraphrase Archimedes, give me a billboard large enough and I will move the planet.

Knowing this does not spare us from being victims of our own humanity. Take my experience last week. I was in Sliema one evening and was headed towards my car to drive home but I realised I’d better have dinner first. I’m not patient enough on an empty stomach to drive any distance.

I looked around and, from where I was standing, could see the sign that said ‘Rocksalt food.bar.shop’, punctuation included. The name was familiar so I just walked in without thinking. It was a little too breezy to sit outside so we headed inside and picked the first available table. As I did so I tried to remember who’d recommended the place, if this had even happened. I’d felt safe because the name was familiar. What if I’d been warned to stay away? And how about that food.bar.shop that sounds so awfully like yet another ‘concept’? There’s this ancient part of our brain that can play silly tricks on us.

The place looked and felt great though, and this put my concerns to bed. It’s been tastefully designed and finished, with dark shelving that hosted wines and foods accented with natural wood edges.

The lighting, the music playing at a respectful level in the background, and the smart waiting staff complete the picture.

The presentation was lovely and the portions generous but all was not well in the kitchen

The menus felt more like they were aimed at providing an upmarket snack than a full meal. They included a selection of interesting antipasti, the usual salads and fancy ftira, as well as deli platters and jacket potatoes. Judging by the interesting selection of whiskies and wines on the menu, the option of picking across this array of flavours and focusing on the wine seemed tempting.

Just as the thought started to take hold, the young lady who would go on to take care of us all evening turned up with a blackboard that displayed the daily specialities. These were a ‘homemade’ chilli jacket potato, pork meatballs, salmon gravlax, lamb fillet, and a chicken breast with foie gras. I suddenly decided I wanted to try the first four.

I decided that the place was half posh snack, half bistro. The board, I presumed, would reflect the chef’s daily whims and serve a proper meal, while the menu itself took care of the snacks. I opened negotiations with the better half with the intention of steering the debate in favour of ordering the entire menu board. I almost felt short-changed when I didn’t have any convincing to do.

Our waitress looked impressed for a moment, then rallied when we said we’d like the meatballs and jacket potato to start with and that we’d have the rest as main course. We added a reasonable Bordeaux to our evening and settled in.

So far, everything had been so pleasant. I said that if the food matched its description and the place, everything would be perfect. The better half pointed out that we’d had nothing to indicate the contrary and that she, too, was optimistic.

We waited for a while longer than I’d expected, possibly accentuated by the fact that I was quite hungry. When our food turned up, however, it looked lovely so I quickly forgot about the wait. The meatballs had been arranged in a little tower on a black, rectangular plate and the salad was arranged around them with neat precision. The jacket potato looked like a jacket potato, only with sauce on it. I started with the potato, needing the comfort first.

The potato was fine but the slightly spicy sauce on top was more like a Bolognese. I wasn’t about to complain though because it was exactly the kind of combination of goodness one needs when famished. I ate exactly half of it and prepared to swap dishes.

There had been five little meatballs and there were four left. I thought nothing of it and made a grab, popping one into my mouth as soon as my plate had settled. It tasted like someone had taken that brown paper inside Amazon delivery boxes and scrunched it up into a tight ball. I chewed until I could swallow it and left three little meatballs behind.

We sat there for a while, our waitress passing by a couple of times. I eventually drew her attention and she was dismayed that we’d left food on the plate. She had evidently been waiting for us to finish up.

Our main course was a similar story. The presentation was lovely and the portions generous but all was not well in the kitchen. The lamb fillet had been woefully overcooked. Hany’s lamb fillets at Ali Baba are the golden standard here, and he sears them on the outside, leaving the inside rare, and then seasons them with love and discipline.

I ate half of one of the tiny fillets and prepared for the swap. Once again there was too much salmon left on the plate for my liking. The gravlax was as salty as it should be and had been cured well but had dried out a little too much. It was also missing the sweet taste of lots, and lots of dill that usually goes into this Scandinavian speciality.

As I pushed what was left of my main course aside I remembered the context in which the place had been recommended. I just wasn’t sure who the culprit was. So I sent a message to a group that I knew would include the person I was looking for. After a couple of redundant ‘not me’/‘not I’ messages, the culpable one owned up quite cheerfully. He said he’d been the one and that he thought it was superb.

Could I have been all out of luck? The person who, it turned out, had told me about Rocksalt has had a few hits and a few misses when recommending restaurants to me in the past so I can’t be sure. He’d managed to plant the name though, so at least he’d tricked the ancient lizard part of my brain into the security it took for me to enter.

Paying €75 can only be justified by the €30 we’d spent on the wine and the fortune it must cost to run the place. I really wanted to fall in love with Rocksalt because it has so much going for it. It is like the poster of a great place to eat in Sliema, looking great and very enticing but that’s as far as it goes. So I’d need to know the kitchen is much more capable, and consistently so, before I allow my memory to play tricks on me again.

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