Ed eats
Marley’s
Xatt il-Palm
Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq
Tel: 2137 6201
Food: 7/10
Service: 8/10
Ambience: 6/10
Value: 8/10
Overall: 7/10
I will be very surprised if anyone actually reads this. So much communication is devoted to the elections on Saturday that every other message is being drowned out by the sheer volume of political messages. It is tempting to add my two cents worth into the fray but I can’t think of an appropriately food-related angle so I suppose I’ll have to remain silent on this matter.
The legs and softer belly parts of the rabbit were incredibly tender and juicy. The experience was almost sinful
I am so convinced that this week’s column will go unnoticed that I’m strongly tempted to take my usual rant to an extreme and simply write all about my plans for a political system to replace democracy should I ever take the nation by storm and appoint myself dictator.
All five columns on this page would be filled with my strategies and tactics, borrowing from sources as diverse as Sun Tzu, Liddell Hart, and General Tacticus from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. Then at the end I would finally admit that I would never have the motivation to execute my plan such is the feebleness of my resolve to actually bother running anything more than my own rather sparsely populated cave.
I’ll force my hand however, and soldier on despite the apparent futility of today’s endeavour. In fact, I’ll get straight to the point. I had dinner at a place called Marley’s.
The story, as you might suspect, started years ago. Marley’s was a pub that had become rather rundown by the time I got to visit it, and I liked the whole rundownness (word of the week, so go spread it) of it all.
It had a sense of anonymity and was the perfect little spot to escape to if you happened to be in the company of someone who you’d rather not be seen in the company of. Not that I know anyone who’d want to do this, of course.
Then the place changed hands and it was tidied up, redecorated, and generally bolstered into a place that doubled as a pub and restaurant with a specific emphasis on serving rabbit. The pub feel was thankfully preserved, with the dining area shoved to the back of the building.
The dining area itself is nothing grand. The focus is on simplicity and functionality – the mainstays of any respectable fenkata. Wooden chairs and tables and a couple of TVs are really all the décor there is – with the exception of a corner DJ stand.
Coupled with the solitary mirror-ball suspended from the ceiling, this gives the impression that the restaurant can quickly turn into a makeshift disco. It will never turn Malta into the clubbing capital of Europe but I suppose if enough people are drunk enough a party of sorts can be had.
The way we wound up at Marley’s last week was quite serendipitous. Three of us sat in a car, quite hungry. One of us said he was in the mood for Chinese food so off we zoomed to park outside a Chinese restaurant.
The place was closed for a private function so the guy at the wheel pulled the perfect stunt. “How about a lovely meal of rabbit at Marley’s?” he asked, shifting into gear and driving towards Baħar iċ-Ċagħaq. Luckily, our reaction was one of enthusiastic consent. Had we not agreed, he’d still have driven there and ate rabbit.
I hadn’t been to Marley’s for quite a while and I recall enjoying a rather protracted celebratory meal of some sort during my last visit. It could have been a birthday party or a bachelor’s meal because we’d taken up the whole restaurant and ate and drank like the apocalypse was nigh.
On the night we visited, we were the only three diners. The bar was serving a few happy patrons, evidently quite used to the place and keeping a watchful eye on a football match that was showing on TV.
Two of them knew more about the game than the coaches themselves and expressed their knowledge in the direction of the TV. Only one of the coaches listened and won the match. The other might have been too stubborn.
We sat and a young lady turned up to take our orders. She was doing all the talking. “Are you having pasta first?” she enquired. We shook our heads and she asked whether we’d be having wine.
She popped back towards the bar and returned with a wine menu. At our first sign of hesitation she recommended a wine herself. She’s practical and helpful in a no-nonsense kind of way and I felt we were in safe hands.
We picked a wine and she vanished, returning within moments with the bottle and wine glasses. Efficient, too.
Meanwhile, we were chatting away and I noticed that while we hadn’t yet ordered food, she was making no signs of returning to take our orders. I mentioned this and our getaway driver, who was evidently more familiar with the place than I am, did all he could to suppress his scorn.
There were three of us, he pointed out, and the young lady could count. That’s our order taken – rabbit x 3. This takes efficiency to a whole new level. If Toyota ever caught wind of this they’ll adopt the model for their staff canteens in Japan.
While we waited for our bunny to be culled, cooled, and cooked, our host brought fresh Maltese bread, stuffed olives, galletti, ġbejna and bigilla. Simple and effective, this combination never fails to induce compulsive nibbling, even to the most strongly resolved carb nihilist among us.
By the time we’d almost finished the goodies, it was time for our rabbit. A huge bowl of the cuddly rodent was served, glistening from its recent frying and liberally sprinkled with roughly-chopped garlic. If a vampire apocalypse were on the cards that night, we’d have been the sole survivors. An equally large bowl of chips followed closely along with a tureen of thick, brown gravy.
We started by sharing the tastiest bits. The liver was the cause of much discussion as we all love it. We shared it equally among us and helped it along with the gravy.
It was unfortunately cooked through and, while I love it to be hardly cooked at all, I understand that most are quite squeamish, so I can’t blame Marley’s for not cooking it the way I would.
Then we moved onto the legs and softer belly parts of the rabbit and these were incredibly tender and juicy. The experience was almost sinful. We dug into the salty, fried rabbit with a compulsiveness that is unique to this sort of experience.
This is not meant to be fine dining. Nor is it meant to represent uncharted territories in a gastronomic journey of discovery. This is a fenkata – a local treasure at its shiniest, glossiest, stickiest and saltiest best.
There were bits of the rabbit’s midriff that weren’t as tender as the choicest morsels and it was a pity to find out we had to avoid these. The discrepancy within the bowl was a little disappointing, mainly because the good bits were excellent.
The chips were excellent and kept the sinful theme going when doused in gravy. They’re crisp on the outside and soft on the inside and turn into little torpedoes of flavour when coated in gravy.
As soon as we’d eaten our fill, our table was cleared and some ħelwa tat-tork on a little saucer was served. It is the plain commercial variety that somehow forms a perfect match to the fenkata – anything fancier would have been a travesty.
We stuck our fingers into the plate, ate the ħelwa and licked our fingers. Nothing is more disarming than this kind of atmosphere.
A €50 note covered the bill for the three of us, including the modest bottle of wine we’d shared. The sheer volume of rabbit we’d eaten more than justified the price and we felt we owed it to the bar to leave some more money there, this time translated into liquid pleasures.
We eventually snuck out into the night, admitting to ourselves that this is one guilty pleasure we have no shame in sharing.
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