Ed eats

Capo Tavola
Marina street,
Marsascala
Tel: 2753 0027

Food: 6/10
Service: 9/10
Ambience: 8/10
Value: 6/10
Overall: 7/10

My visit to Capo Tavola in Marsascala was quite unlike most of my trips to other restaurants.

I walked out very pleased with the serendipity of my discovery and only half of this was attributable to the food

I have mentioned that I plan my life from meal to meal a little too often and my mum, the only regular reader of this column, is rolling her eyes at the repetition.

My visit to Capo tavola was totally unplanned – I happened to be in Marsascala and walked in, intrigued by the appealingly deliberate simplicity of its décor as well as the very clearly Italian nature of its menu.

I walked out very pleased with the serendipity of my discovery and only half of this was attributable to the food. The food was actually nothing spectacular. It was good but not in the way that causes an overwhelming desire to return the next day.

I really did enjoy my post-prandial chat with the man who owns the restaurant. The fact that we ended up speaking for about half an hour is strange in itself.

I had never met the guy before so having so much to talk about boils down to a common passion (and some common dislikes) for the way food is treated nowadays.

Add that to my poor grasp of Italian, lacking the exposure of Italian cartoons and La Ruota Della Fortuna as a kid, making my skills practically as poor as that of any child raised in today’s era of English-language TV. And yet we managed to agree that the world needs a 180 degree turn in the way the relationship between food and nature is going.

We agreed that there is an increasing detachment between the sources of our ingredients and the way in which they’re purchased. Most young people would be hard pressed to make any connection between an egg and a hen, let alone perceive the link between a hamburger and a cow.

There is an even greater lack of awareness of the seasonality of our ingredients. The market demands that every fruit and vegetable known to us is available throughout the year, in near-identical shape and size, at roughly the same price.

I know that it is fashionable for anyone who is passionate about anything to suggest that whatever it is they like to be part of every child’s school curriculum. For every person who plays an obscure Turkish percussion instrument or uses catgut in curtain embroidery, there is a meeting to discuss the inclusion of this activity in schools.

So, I feel another proposal won’t go amiss. Mine would be to take all schoolchildren to a farm, just once a year, on a visit that will introduce them to everything from warm soil and growing grass to mooing cows and clucking hens.

When I was young, back when Yul Brynner had a full head of hair, we could buy little chicks in school and take them home to exasperated parents. Together we would watch in horror as the cute, yellow balls of down grew into angrily pecking hens.

We learned two lessons. The first was never to buy one again. The second was that small animals need a lot of care and attention if they are ever to become a source of food.

Of this and other woes we lamented, first over a barrique-aged grappa and then while inspecting our host’s wine collection. From this collection we had chosen a rather understated nebbiolo that rejoiced in the catchy name of ‘Il Nebbio’.

As a baby cousin of the mighty Barolo, this was a very enjoyable and inexpensive companion for the evening. Even more enjoyable was the way it was served, with the first few drops used to rinse both glasses and then tipped into a tasting glass and discarded.

Short of decanting, one of those little aluminium discs was rolled up and inserted into the bottleneck to aid aeration.

As we waited for our starters, the lady who takes care of the dining area served a rather elegant dish, long and narrow with little square indentations that contained our amuse-bouche. These turned out to be galletti with a tomato paste and sesame seed on top.

As sweet as the presentation was, the little morsels were uninspired.

The lady who took our orders, and who incidentally was extremely helpful and unfailingly polite, suggested that we combine our starters on a single dish. The result was a combo of sautéed prawns, simply prepared allowing the prawn to express itself but bizarrely served at room temperature, a generous portion of excellent buffalo mozzarella and a trio of fish that had been described as carpaccio.

I am used to carpaccio being served raw but the octopus had been thoroughly cooked. Sardines and salmon were actually uncooked and served with a very generous dash of vinegar.

I was initially sceptical but the cool, sour dish turned out to be quite a refreshing one. Family-produced olive oil at table is a nice touch and was a treat with all the food we had for starters.

We waited for quite a while for our steak to be served. Having ordered fillet, we both requested that it be served blue. I had been enticed by the mention of a Barolo-based sauce but seem to have missed the ‘Valdostana’ mention in the description.

Served more like medium-rare, the fillet was served in the centre of an otherwise empty plate with a dollop of cream-based sauce atop it and with no pomp or circumstance.

I felt it didn’t quite live up to their tagline claiming ‘Il gusto nell’ Arte’. Grilled aubergine and courgettes, sautéed potatoes and mushrooms were served in neat arrays on the side to make up for the rather humdrum presentation of the steak.

I was not really up for dessert but the mention of tiny versions of popular Italian desserts changed my mind. I picked mini cannelloni filled with crema pasticcera candied fruit and this was simply superb.

Being capo tavola that night, I picked up the bill for €95 – not quite what I’d expected when I first walked in to the rather understated restaurant, particularly if one were to consider the very simply laid tables out on the pavement.

I wrapped up the chat with our affable Italian host who, proud to be Roman, told me about his love affair with Malta that started with his first visits as a child and filled me in with his plans for the restaurant.

He intends to keep both the menu and the art on display alive by changing both regularly.

I look forward to returning in winter, the season I associated most closely with Roman food. By then I am pretty sure that the passion with which the guys at Capo Tavola treat their food will have settled into a formula that keeps the level of their delivery a little more consistent.

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