Ed eats

Pepe Nero – Veċċja
Trejqet il-Veċċja
St Paul’s Bay
Tel: 2155 5551

Food: 7/10  
Location: 5/10
Service: 6/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 6/10

When I was a kid I went through life a little mystified. I very often got the impression that there was a rulebook that dictated how one was to live their lives and behave when in the presence of others. I got this impression because I felt I was missing my copy.

So I either got on with whatever it is I was doing in my own way or watched and learned how others did stuff, often after a slight embarrassment. As I grew older I figured that there was no such rulebook. Everyone just perpetuated the system they’d been used to.

And yet, it is easy to fall into the trap of viewing the world and its collection of behaviours through the lens of one’s own situation. If everyone around me watches football, then I’d presume that everyone will be watching the cup final that’s on tonight. Well, quite the opposite in my case but you get my drift.

I keep this in mind when writing this column. My dining habits are unusual, erratic, and occur with a higher frequency than most. I revel in the parts of an animal that the butcher doesn’t quite know what to do with yet I understand that offal is less popular than steak and chicken breast.

For me, Sunday lunch is a family affair. It is an excellent reason for us all to meet up and enjoy the delights that my Dad’s kitchen turns out. It tends to be a rather drawn out affair that spawns interesting conversation, interrupted only by the antics of 22 young men in shorts on TV who run around, fall over, and get paid handsomely for it.

Yet, there is a vast swathe of our society for whom Sunday lunch is a weekly appointment with someone else’s kitchen. It is the day when the family member who does all the cooking takes a break. So, with everyone in tow, the family chef gets treated to a meal without having to prepare in advance or clean up when everyone’s belly is full.

This is half the reason for me to do without the Sunday-lunch-at-a-restaurant ritual. The other half is that the best places tend to be packed to the rafters and I prefer a calmer afternoon. But rules are there to be broken and, as you’ve gathered by now, I wound up at Pepe Nero in St Paul’s Bay for Sunday lunch, accompanied by one of my brothers and his family.

The rest of clan succumbed to the flu and, dear as they are to me, there are some viruses I’d rather they didn’t share with me. “I love you but not the flu”, read the RSVP.

Getting to Pepe Nero is a little odd. There are signs that lead you down a staircase within what looks like a block of flats. Have faith. The stairs lead to the restaurant. Once inside, any hesitation vanishes. The restaurant is large and composed of two main dining areas, both of which lead to terraces.

They’ve put effort into creating a welcoming space with red brick, cement rendering, and huge glass windows with a view of the bay that let a gorgeous light into the dining area. It was a bit windy for al fresco lunch but I can imagine the terraces to be just fabulous on summer evenings.

We were in the larger dining space and it is essentially one big acoustic chamber so everyone’s voice bounces off the walls and, as a result, everyone needs to speak a little louder to be heard. With nothing to help dissipate or absorb the sound and all tables arranged in a single, large space, the place ends up sounding like a canteen.

I arrived a little before the rest did and was ignored so I asked one of the serving staff for menus. He wasn’t impressed but delivered a couple and dashed off. I’m not one who needs to be treated with velvet gloves but I take exception to such a brusque attitude. The better half put it down to a language barrier.

Somehow, the level of food we’d experienced for starters dipped slightly when it came to the main courses

Eventually, the brother arrived and we discussed the menus. There’s a starter section from the shellfish display and more starters that include meat and fish-based dishes, pasta, and salads. Main courses are also split into meat and fish dishes while pizzas get a sheet unto themselves.

We decided quite quickly and managed to attract the attention of another member of the front of house to ask for our orders to be taken. Then we sat and chatted and ate some bread and butter. By the time our bottle of wine arrived, we’d forgotten we’d ordered it.

An hour later, our starters were served. The shack platter, pretty in display and even prettier in content, is composed exclusively of raw seafood. There’s one oyster, clams, mussels, and salmon carpaccio in a scallop shell. The freshness of everything on the dish made up for at least half of the waiting time and I found myself wishing I’d ordered more of this as a main course. This time around, the bread served with the starters was actually fresh and very tasty so things were looking up.

I sampled starters around the table when I was done with mine. The pepata di cozze is also a very accomplished dish, with a salty and peppery broth swishing around plump mussels that had been cooked just to the point where they retain their flavour and texture. The only dish my nephew was eating was a grilled squid that was also grilled for just the right time and beautifully seasoned. He’s lucky I’m concerned about his sustenance.

The shell shack tacos are a bit of an oddity. Three, hard-shell tacos are served – one with a lovely mussel and saffron, one with an unlikely combination of salmon and pineapple and the least likely of all being stuffed with mozzarella di bufala. I don’t quite know what to make of this concoction but all the ingredients were fresh and the tacos nice and crisp so all is well really.

Our main courses meant another long wait. This time we were fortified with starters and wine so we didn’t really mind. With every table in the restaurant occupied, a bit of a wait is to be expected, even if one would imagine that the kitchen is equipped to handle a service that’s filled to capacity.

Somehow, the level of food we’d experienced for starters dipped slightly when it came to the main courses. The Tegamino, a ceramic pot of mussels, clams, and prawns covered with a pizza dough, wound up with rather overcooked shellfish that had all acquired the same flavour. It wasn’t inedible but it does look much more impressive than it tastes.

The ravioli with aragosta were significantly better, stuffed generously with lobster flesh and served with a slightly overpowering sauce that remained sympathetic to the delicate flavour of the crustacean.

I’d ordered the crab stewed in beer and this is served on top of a generous portion of overcooked tagliatelle. The sauce was tasty in a savoury in the way that a tomato-based fish sauce is so that it is hard to tell that there’s any crab in it.

The crab itself was quite masterfully stewed so the flesh tore apart from the shell with little resistance.

I was itching to get to the most prized part of the crab, the meat inside its fearsome claws, but we had no way of accessing it. We eventually asked for the tools necessary to do so and were regaled with a cracker but no picks so I could crack the hard shell and then dig out the flesh with the back of my fork. I wasn’t about to let manners come between me and the tasty morsel.

As I pondered dessert I saw a look of panic on my brother’s face. He pointed at his watch and I looked back, clueless. “Man United, Liverpool”, quoth he. “A gay club in the North West?, I asked. He wasn’t amused. We asked for the bill.

We paid €200 for four of us and the young man’s solitary dish. This isn’t bad for the quantity of seafood we’d consumed. As we settled the bill and gathered jackets and scarves I looked around me and noticed that not a single table had been vacated.

In that rulebook I’d missed as a child there’s surely a chapter about enjoying Sunday lunch for as long as you can before Monday comes around again. So I remembered to stop looking at the world through my eyes for a moment and realise that the wait I had mildly bemoaned is actually relished by most.

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