Ed eats

Ocean Basket
Qawra Road,
Qawra.
Tel: 2223 5000

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

The only thing that consoles me about this heat is a rather evil notion. The Germans even have a word for the pleasure that one experiences when observing the suffering of others. Back in spring, I used ominous tones that Mr R. R. Martin would be proud of to warn those around me that summer was coming.

Ocean Basket is a South African seafood franchise.

They looked at me like I’d told a child the truth about Father Christmas and said that they lived for summer. That the nine months that aren’t summer are merely a gap between the fun that is one summer and the fun that the next will surely bring.

Now that they’re suffering and complaining loudly, I feel slightly vindicated. Who in their right mind spends nine months waiting for this torture? At this point, even stripping to the limits of public decency does nothing to help matters.

Even the slight annoyance I’m feeling when writing this has made my temperature rise, so I’ll stop whining for a moment.

I’ll turn instead to my espying of a few billboards that screamed ‘Ocean Basket’, which reminded me of the South African franchise.

I’d come across them in Cyprus and looked it up but never actually ate there. The franchise had spread across the south of the African continent and then started moving towards us, finally winding up in Qawra, of all places.

I was curious. It is quite ambitious to head to a Mediterranean island with what is essentially a fried fish franchise. The visuals went up well before the restaurant was actually open for business too, showing a bubbling enthusiasm for feeding us. So as soon as the opportunity arose, I drove to Qawra, braving a long line of slow-moving traffic in the process.

When we got there, it was evident that we should have reserved a table. I hadn’t thought this important, mainly because my impression was that of a restaurant that was mainly aimed at the quicker end of the dining spectrum.

The terrace, a terrible idea in this weather but a lovely one when things cool down, is still in progress. The inside dining area seemed packed. And when the young lady who greets patrons turned up, the look on her face confirmed my suspicions – no reservation meant no table.

They did have a table available an hour later though and I wasn’t about to brave the traffic back home on an empty stomach, so I left my name and promised to be back in an hour.

In the meantime, I figured I’d have a quiet beer at the reggae bar at Ta’ Fra Ben. The short walk felt like calvary and luckily there was a cold beer at the end of it.

The service at the reggae bar is quite amusing. Patrons order drinks at the bar and take them to a table. They also order snacks at the bar and wait at table while the snacks are prepared. Once a plate of chips, for instance, is done, the girl at the bar takes a little megaphone and screams, “Chips!” into it until someone walks up to the bar to claim them.

The young man who’d led us to our table and eventually brought menus turned out to be the highlight of our evening

Had I not just booked a table at Ocean Basket I’d have ordered chips just to be wailed at through a megaphone and enjoy my 15 seconds of fame. Another time, perhaps.

Back at Ocean Basket, our table was ready as promised. We were led inside by a young man who is evidently South African and he showed us our table, practically in the centre of a large and rather loud dining area.

Glass panes wall in half of the space and bare walls the other half, so every conversation sounds amplified. The only people who don’t shout as much as we Maltese do are the South African team members, beautifully soft-spoken and unbelievably polite. The contrast is so stark it is embarrassing.

The young man who’d led us to our table and eventually brought menus turned out to be the highlight of our evening, and alongside his impeccable manners and know-ledge of the food being served, was the harmony with which the rest of the team worked together.

When we ordered, he told us to expect a wait because the kitchen was really stretched to its limits. While we waited, I watched the team at work. They collaborated, mostly without needing to speak. The guy who delivered starters to an adjacent table took a couple of plates off a tray and held it out behind him so that a girl who was passing behind it simply took it off him and walked to the kitchen.

Our wine was served by another girl and this was spotted by another member of the team who turned up while she poured into our glasses, placing an ice bucket at our table.

I was surprised because the menus contain what is essentially an upmarket version of fast food. The list includes three sizes of prawn, fried squid, mussels and fried fish. And apart from the sushi menu, this pretty much exhausts the offering. The options are, in fact, various takes on these core ingredients.

The starters are probably more interesting and we ordered a meze platter to share, which consisted of taramosalata, tzatziki, black olives, grilled halloumi and feta cheese for the Greek half of things and fried squid and fried squid heads for us to remember we were at Ocean Basket.

For main course I picked one of the double combos that consisted of grilled ‘prince’ shrimps and Cajun squid, served with rice and chips on the side. The sides and the way everything is cooked is quite customisable, so you can practically put anything you like together.

The tone of voice is quite jocular, with pseudo-Latin witticisms and cheerful phonetic spelling peppered around menus, table mats and wall graphics. This, along with the well-structured menu and consistent blue-and-white theme, make it hard to escape the franchise feeling of the place. And I don’t mean this badly – the repeatable experience at a good franchise helps us predict what we’re in for. This is helpful if you’re trying to avoid surprises.

Our starter came in the form of a long, rectangular platter loaded with little dishes and the whole thing was placed right in front of us. The girl who served the starter even moved our plates to the centre of the table, encouraging us to simply share the platter by attacking it with our cutlery. I’m used to the extra step of tipping things on to my plate before eating them but I was perfectly happy to skip this formality and dive right in.

The dips are, predictably, commercial, with that luminous, pink taramo that is a now just a memory of the real thing and is, unfortunately, much more common than the real thing. They do the trick though and we were happy to eat around the plate, enjoying what made for a great start to a summer meal. The only bits we left were the fried squid heads. They were nicely seasoned but a little too tough. Odd when you’re at Ocean Basket, where this is meant to be their staple.

Our main courses also took a while. In the meantime, our man popped by twice to apologise for the wait, offer an explanation, ask how we were doing and pour our wine.

The wine was one he’d recommended, an €11 bottle of house Chenin Blanc. It will never go down in the annals of winemaking history but at that price one can’t really be picky.

My dish was a tale in two halves. The shrimps hadn’t been too happy to travel half way across the world and were overcooked and a little rubbery. I didn’t really bother with them, turning instead to the Cajun squid that was leagues ahead. The Cajun seasoning was spicy, as it should be, and the squid perfectly tender and moist inside with just enough texture left to retain a positive bite.

The platter for one was also a mixed bag. The fried fish was excellent, the mussels beautifully seasoned but overcooked, the squid heads were tougher than they were crisp and the prawns had been on the same plane as the ones on my plate. Perhaps we should have ordered the queen or king prawns to really test the waters.

In the end, we paid €50 and were happy to do so. We’ve paid extortionate prices for seafood before and the bill at Ocean Basket was really quite reasonable. Perhaps I shouldn’t compare the quality of the prawns to what I’m used to paying much more for and just appreciate the service and the way they’ve turned a feast of fried fish into a very democratic offering. This food is meant to be accessible to all and this is exactly what the franchise has, in its cheerful and enthusiastic way, quite happily achieved.

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