Ed eats

Peppino’s
71, St George’s Road
St Julian’s
Tel: 2137 3200

Food: 3/10
Service: 4/10
Ambience: 8/10
Value: 4/10
Overall: 5/10

Today’s story is not one I was hoping to tell. I had planned to visit an old bastion of Malta’s dining out circuit, one that I hoped was too big to fail. In my mind, the charm, the service, and a pretty decent kitchen would have been the order of the day. I know Peppino’s changed hands, too, so I expected there to be a little improvement on the standard of the food that, let’s face it, had dipped of late.

In its heyday, the list of people Peppino’s served read like a who’s who. With its unique location and even more intriguing social encounters, the restaurant had over two decades of stories to tell. Which it didn’t, and this is just as well.

The restaurant is housed in one of the only real town houses left along the St Julian’s coastline, sitting at the top of Spinola Bay and glowing from the inside like a beacon to the hungry. There’s even a little table in a balcony, at which a couple can sit and enjoy the view while in full view of the street downstairs. All it would take was for the couple to turn to the sea and break into song for a scene from an unlikely opera.

The restaurant hasn’t really changed. It is built on a relatively small footprint so it has dining rooms on every floor. We were greeted at the door and led upstairs by a young lady who offered us any table we liked except the one on the balcony. We picked the one behind it so we’d still get a view of the bay over the shoulders of the ones who’d booked the table. The way the tables are slightly crammed into the restaurant means that practically everyone is bound to watch them eat.

The girl was back with menus this time and she told us that the choice of fresh fish was either sea bream or ‘corb’. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this, and asked again. Her colleague, an older man with the air of a maître’d, dashed into the conversation saying it was ‘card’, and he spelled it out for me. I slowly realised what was going on and asked whether they meant gurbell. I haven’t heard it referred to as corb for a long time and pieced this together from the letters I had to work with. They quickly agreed.

The menus are a strange little affair. There is an introduction to the place that mentions concepts and journeys and such like but then there’s one page that covers the entire menu except for the salads. These get another page. So there’s a handful of appetisers, another of starters and another of main dishes that form this conceptual journey and they start off with Parma ham and melon. So much for concepts.

Nothing wrong with a traditional menu though. I only took exception to the introduction promising something different. I love a well-known dish, served well so I was still full of hope at this point. The service was a little shaky but I was looking forward to the food.

Our main courses looked more like we’d gone to a kiosk than a restaurant

The girl who served us was polite enough but there was a slight language problem and this introduces a little awkwardness, having to explain everything one says to make sure there is no confusion. The man who seemed to be taking care of the front of house was enthusiastic but knew as little as his colleague did about the food and wine.

Ordering a Fiano di Avellino and hearing the way they both played telephone with it was amusing. It went from Fiano to Fiore and from Fiore to Fiera. I was surprised it made it to the table.

Luckily, the view from here made up for the confusion. The bay looks pretty from this distance and in the twinkling lights and shimmering sea turn the view from the window into quite a shareworthy mobile shot. You even get to see the occasional little flashes that tourists make with their cameras as they ruin their own photo.

I’d decided about the gurbell early on in the process. There was nothing in the list of main courses that captured my imagination and the interaction that the poor fish had instigated was reason enough to choose it. For starters I liked the sound of the razor shell and mussel gratin and eventually managed to convey all this to our waitress.

The better half, amused half to death by this time, picked the tartare of tuna and swordfish to start with and fried prawns and calamari for main course.

By the time our starters had made it to our table, the table at the balcony had been occupied and the proximity and angle at which we were seated was a little disconcerting. I don’t normally watch other people eat while at dinner but it is quite hard to avoid doing so in this case.

The man I watched had also ordered the tuna and swordfish tartare. Only the one across the table from me had been served in two mounds of mixed bits of tuna and swordfish while his was arranged as one mound of tuna tartare and another of swordfish. His arrangement seemed like a much more sensible approach to the dish. Mixing the fish had essentially ruined both of them.

The better half valiantly ate one of the mounds and left the other. I picked at it but there was nothing going for the dish so I had no incentive to go further. My razor clam and mussel gratin looked promising but tasted quite insipid. The gratin had dried out the poor shellfish and the last one I popped into my mouth had gone off so it tasted quite awful. That is not the last thing you want to taste at the end of your starter. The poor Fiano took the toll.

Our main courses looked more like we’d gone to a kiosk than a restaurant. I had two fillets of gurbell that had been doused in a thick tomato sauce and olives, a very sad salad, and three rings of undercooked roast potato. The fish didn’t quite taste of fish. It tasted of tomato sauce so I left most of it.

The fried shrimp and squid were quite tasteless so plenty of lemon was enlisted to the cause. This didn’t stop the squid from being quite tough so, even if I really felt like more main course, I couldn’t steal too many from across the table. And my act was met with encouragement. The squid-eater was also giving up early on into the dish.

We paid over €80 for the ordeal so one is paying handsomely for the location, as is expected. I walked out feeling like a crime had just been committed. This location and the name itself deserve to be treated much, much better. I’ve no doubt, however, that the location will attract hordes of unsuspecting tourists throughout the summer so business will be great. I’ll just drive by the place.

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