Murella
Il-Menqa
Marsalforn, Gozo
Tel: 2156 2473

Food: 7/10  
Location: 7/10
Service: 8/10
Value: 8/10
Overall: 7.5/10

I’m back. I’m sorry for the delay in service but I was busy trying to eat my way across France. As with any undertaking of the sort, my ambitions could not be matched by my best efforts.

Even trying to chip away at the mountain of cheeses I wanted to sample felt futile. It was like a battlefield. They had put forth an entire army, clad in the steel certainty of centuries of culinary success while I’d fielded a kitten armed with a cotton bud.

But one cannot dismiss even a feeble attempt. I tasted my way through as much food as possible, going through whatever was local to the area I was in. This often meant eating beef that came from a cow I’d recently shared a postcode with. Or working my way through cheeses that were distinguished only by their percentage of fat content, going from a measly five per cent to a majestic 95 per cent.

Alas, one must work to earn one’s keep. So I’m back to our scorching archipelago, determined to maintain the weight I gained during August. I’ve been putting plenty of effort into this endeavour, and even travelled to Gozo for reinforcements.

Which made me have a good, long think about restaurant service in general. I will now depart on another tangent. Skip ahead a few paragraphs if you’re impatient.

Once, when I was young and the world was fighting different wars, when we had a currency of our own and borders and a handful of airlines that bothered to fly all the way to the centre of the Mediterranean, we had a reputation. We were the friendly nation. Our unique selling points were our charm, ubiquitous smiles, pretty and wacky public transport, and so on and so forth.

Now that we have removed barriers such as the Maltese lira and borders, now that we have two dozen airlines fighting for a slot to land in, we’ve ditched all our advantages. Service in restaurants that cater for tourists ranges from indifferent to hostile. Transport lost its charm but scores more on the dysfunctional scale. And so on and so forth.

I thought we’d lost all this but all it did was move to Gozo. I spent a day there, meeting family that was there for the weekend, and had lunch at the most unlikely of locations. Unless you’re swimming at Ramla Bay, that is. But that’s where we met and it was lunchtime so that’s where we ate.

Evidently, we’re not the first to have discovered Murella’s service level, food quality, and excellent value

Common friends had recommended that we eat at Il-Kċina tar-Ramla, and they’d gone on to specify the ravjul. I trust their recommendation so there we sat and ordered ravjul. The girl who took our orders was brilliant. She was friendly, accommodating almost to the point of being obsequious, and reminded me of what it was like to eat in Malta 15 years ago. She spoke to us in Maltese, until she heard the kids speak English and simply switched languages depending on whom she was addressing, maintaining a pleasant demeanour until we’d consumed the lovely ravjul and got up to leave.

I looked around and observed her and her colleagues as they buzzed from table to table, retaining the pleasant smiles, the patience, and the efficiency. The place is a beach shack and there are poncey restaurants with fine-dining ambition that have a lot to learn from it.

Dinner was an experience that was similar in many ways. Once again, I was following the lead of those around me and was happy to sit wherever I was told to. We wound up at a restaurant called Murella, in Marsalforn. We arrived relatively early and sat at a table on the terrace. As is often the case, the kids sat at one end and the adults at the other. We played with Star Wars figures while the adults spoke about whatever it is adults speak about. I’m sure they looked at us with wistful expressions, wishing they could join in. But they can’t tell a Jedi from a Sith so we left them out.

The girl who took our orders was friendly, once again reminding me of service in Malta a couple of decades ago. There’s something about the apparently genuine interest in the way our meal would pan out that is hard to describe. But it is the cornerstone upon which we had built a reputation for being a friendly nation and the elusive characteristic that we’ve all but lost in the name of progress.

Our ordering was chaotic. We changed our minds half way, got the names of some dishes wrong and swapped orders as an afterthought. This was of no concern to our host. She smiled and encouraged us, helping out wherever she could and repeating our orders to make sure we’d get what we wanted. What mattered, especially to us at the kid’s end of the table, is that we were never made to feel like we’d misbehaved.

The menus show that there’s more thought given to the food than one would expect of the rather touristic location. The pizza section, for instance, starts with two hero pizzas – the Regina Margherita and the Marinara. These, the menu explains, are the cornerstone of Neapolitan pizza, so they deserve the priority they’re given. There’s something for everyone really, with pasta dishes, salads, grills, and such like.

We ordered across the menu and stuck to a single course to keep things simple. I’m not sure how long we waited but it can’t have been long because my end of the table didn’t have time to run out of patience. Our food was served practically at once by a number of members of the front of house team and this helps keep things ticking over smoothly.

I’d ordered the Regina Margherita and, because I was feeling unusually subversive, had requested the addition of fresh sausage. Purists are shaking their heads. As they do, I’m the one who ate exactly what he felt like. The pizza is a proper sourdough, cooked at a high temperature for a short time so it is crisp on the very outside but soft on the inside. Considering the distance between the menqa in Marsaxlokk and Naples, this scores very well on effort. They use the right tomato and a lovely mozzarella. They also put a bottle of pretty good oil on the table so you can add a drop of that, too.

I tasted food from around the table and the level is consistent, even if I thought mine was probably the star of the show. The pulled duck salad, for instance, was a pleasant mix of greens, dried fruit, nuts, and a generous serving of slow-cooked duck, all brought together with a simple dressing. The funghi pizza also benefits from fresh ingredients, has the welcome addition of oyster mushrooms apart from the standard field variety, and is prepared on the same, sourdough base. In short, as I worked my fork into other people’s plates stealing bits of food, it all turned out to be above what I’d expected for what looked like a tourist trap from afar.

The adults had shared a bottle of wine and this brought the total bill to under €15 per person. By the time we’d settled this, the restaurant and the terrace had filled up completely. Evidently, we’re not the first to have discovered Murella’s service level, food quality, and excellent value. Sitting a couple of meters from little fishing boats that bob up and down on the inky sea is just an added benefit.

It seems like Malta’s lost what Gozo has gained – an experience that separates us from generic Island offerings the world over. Perhaps going back in time a little could do us a world of good.