Ed eats

Chang Thai
Triq it-Turisti
Buġibba
+356 9945 0609

Food: 7/10
Location: 8/10
Service: 7/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 7/10

Just a fortnight ago I was ranting about my desire to expand my culinary experiences. I vaguely recall citing boredom with the general level of restaurant experiences I encounter, unless I happen to be travelling. Last year placed a set of personal circumstances at my feet that led me to a dozen different destinations.

I ate my way through all of them with dogged determination, chalking every meal onto the blackboard of experiences that I feel could make this column a slightly better place. I’m altruistic that way. It might sound like I’m complaining but my travels were restricted to Europe so, while I was extremely well fed, the range of experiences were limited to this most venerable continent.

I was pondering all this while writing my yearly roundup and wishing this page allowed me to write about my meals from beyond our shores when I received one of those wonderfully unexpected texts. An old friend, an ancient one actually, wrote to say there was this Thai restaurant in Buġibba that I should try. He’d just finished a meal there and thought I’d like it. Thai food sounded like just the cure to my boredom.

Now, this man is ancient enough for me to have made friends with him when we were both trying to figure out how to tie our laces, so he knows me better than most. He’s also that kind of friend with whom one can afford a couple of years without an encounter and just pick up a conversation without having to dance around preliminaries and catch-ups. As another one of my classmates recently put it, we’ve lived through each other’s greatest mistakes together, so there’s nothing we could ever need to hide from one another.

My reply, as is always the case when someone like him suggests a restaurant, was something to the effect of; “If you’re so certain it’s worth my while, you ought to join me.” This means that if it is a worthy experience, then we’ll have enjoyed it together. If not, then he deserves to suffer with me.

The restaurant is on Triq it-Turisti and, as coincidence would have it, this happens to be the same street on which this very same guy had a summer house as a kid. Aged 10, he’d told me the name of the street and the name of the house and we’d planned to go swimming as soon as school was out. I hopped onto a bus. Then onto another one. And made it to Buġibba, planning to ask someone where this blessed street was.

I did so, and the bus driver I’d asked helpfully pointed out that the street stretched around two kilometres in both directions from where we were standing. I thanked him and walked for around an hour, first one way and then the other, until I found my friend’s house.

This time round, I used a navigation app on my phone and was only lost for 15 minutes. So much for decades of technology.

I felt like i was a welcome guest at someone’s house

The restaurant looks like a recent addition to the Buġibba dining circuit and has been done up relatively tastefully. Some of the décor is to be expected, demanded almost, of an Asian restaurant, but I wasn’t prepared for the inclusion of a proper shrine. The Thai staff have given this pride of place and it is a heart-warming representation of what it is like to travel so far and hang onto the very essence of one’s religion and culture. I paused for a moment to admire the veneration with which it had been put together and this changed my set of expectations altogether.

I’d somehow been expecting a themed restaurant and I suddenly felt like I was a welcome guest at somebody’s house. The menu took this further, with every dish named in Thai and then followed by a description of that dish in English. I’ll refer to the description of every dish for the sake of intelligibility, but anyone who’s been to Thailand will be glad to revisit their favourite dishes, here referred to by name.

The mixed starters.The mixed starters.

The man who seemed to be running the place is Maltese and, I suspect, he is the only one in the restaurant. The level of service is helpful and polite across the board, verging on deference at times. This served to cement the initial feeling of being invited to someone’s home.

My friend and I looked through the menu and discussed the dishes in detail. We somehow wanted to obtain a fair representation of what the kitchen had to offer. He was at an advantage. He’d been before and, having loved what he’d eaten, was set on ordering an entirely different set of dishes so there were bits of the menu that were out of bounds. We finally picked a couple of starters and a couple of main courses with the intention of sharing the lot.

Satisfied that we’d covered the essentials, we settled in with a bottle of Sauvignon and a lifetime of memories. Then we spotted the starters that were being delivered to another table andwere instantly curious. We seized the attention of our host and asked what he’d just served. There were golden prawn cakes served with a plum sauce and fish-cakes served with cucumber and a sweet chilli sauce. As we embarked on a debate about which to add to our order, our host delivered an elegant solution in the form of a half-portion of each. And we knew it had to be so.

When our starters were served, they occupied a fair portion of the table. We had this bowl of steamed mussels that we decided to start with because we imagined it to be the more delicate of flavours. The scent coming from the little pot was like that of an edible perfume, with lemongrass and coriander giving a simultaneously sweet and sharp note. We shied away from the chilli on the side and went for the succulent mussels in their savoury and fragrant and aromatic broth.

Next, we tackled the bonus dish. The fish cakes were of that consistency that I’ve only ever encountered with Thai food, with the ingredients being worked into a dense and homogeneous texture. The prawn cakes had a lovely, crisp exterior and a much more airy texture to them. In both cases, it was the exquisite fragrance that had us making all sorts of approving sounds. Finally, we turned our attention to the dish we thought we knew what to expect from, spring rolls filled with pork, dried sausage and taro. They were predictably savoury, with a little nutty hint of the taro adding an unusual twist.

Suitably impressed by the spread we’d just consumed, we turned our attention to the main course. We’d picked dishes that stated their provenance, mainly because whoever had written out the menus had taken the time to do so. From the North of the country we chose marinated beef with spring onion, lemongrass and chilli. The sauce was lovely and, as we’d come to expect, was a treat for our nose before we’d even tasted the meat.

We shared pad thai noodles and added the grilled beef to it. The sauce was surprisingly delicate, showing unusual restraint for this kind of dish. The beef itself wasn’t quite as tender as I’d liked it to be though, particularly for meat that’s been marinated.

Venturing South, we also ordered a mild lamb curry and, once again, the sauce was hard to fault while the lamb itself could have been more tender. It looked like we’d found a small chink in the armour of this restaurant’s kitchen.

We paid €40 each for the meal which, I suppose, is a fair price for the quantity and quality of the food we’d eaten. And the quality is largely there. Taking the herbs and spices that this culinary realm is so heavily based on and allowing them to shine in a such a delicate way takes skill, and there’s plenty of that at Chang Thai. I resolved to return, for the fragrance, the variety, and the humility of the service, with the goal of tasting much more of the menu when I do. And now I know where to find a cure for culinary boredom when I need one.

You can send e-mails about this column to edeats@gmail.com.

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