Ed eats

Tex Mex American Bar and Grill
89, The Strand,
Sliema

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

The French are said to have been louder protesting against the introduction of the Big Mac and Eurodisney than they were at a hundred thousand German troops marching into their capital city.

Whoever thought of coating a ring of onion in batter, deep-frying it, and serving it as a bone fide menu item was just lazy

Nastier still are those who presume that the mayor at the time reacted to the invasion with a nonchalant, “Table for 100,000 Sir?” I can’t fault them for loving their food and their culture more than anything else.

Perhaps it is unsurprising that until today they seem to have far fewer themed restaurants than most other European countries I have visited. The rest of us have encouraged and welcomed a mind-boggling array of cultures to present us with their cuisine.

There is now an ever-increasing desire to discover the unchronicled and uncharted, to present charmingly exotic foods as the dish you have not tried yet, to taste the untasted before it’s cool. Watch your tongue.

And yet it is this variety, this massively multicultural melting pot of cooking styles and ingredients, that has shrunken the globe to the size of a dinner plate. My dinner plate, more importantly.

This means I can almost taste my way around the more trodden spots on the planet without ever leaving our shores.

I will only lament this when I feel we’re in danger of losing access to our own cooking and, thanks to some dedicated proponents of Malta’s own kitchen, I can’t see this happening any time soon.

This is not to say I am not tempted to head over to Turkey and open up a chain of pastizzi places in equivalent proportion per capita to the number of kebab places in Malta. I am so far held back by lack of the considerable means it would take to achieve this.

It would be even harder for the planet to pay Ireland back for the global presence of Irish pubs and probably just as tough to get our own back on the huge stateof Texas and its even largerneighbour, Mexico.

Tex-Mex restaurants normally try to present food from this huge expanse in a cheerfully kitsch package that involves re-creating a combination of Texan saloons with Mexican Cantinas. Wood floors, swinging doors, leather saddles nailed to walls and trinkets like sombreros and spurs complete the film-set look.

The Tex-Mex restaurant that occupied the same spot in Sliema (opposite the Fortizza) recently moved to larger and decidedly more modern premises on the other side of Sliema.

Now located on the way into Sliema from The Strand, the place has lost all of the traditional cues that scream Tex-Mex, opting instead for polished surfaces and shiny materials.

Had I not read Tex-Mex on the menus, I’d easily have thought there was no particular theme to the place. This is not a bad thing.

The menus are worth a mention for their size alone. They make a valiant effort at representing every single bit of the Tex-Mex landmass by virtue of their gargantuan span.

Appetizers, starters, pasta dishes, rice dishes, pizzas, burgers and sandwiches have entire pages to themselves and I have not even got to the meat courses. There is a smattering of Mexican-style dishes everywhere so it is entirely possible to visit and have a Mexican-themed meal with little effort.

When I visited I was but a single member of a large and unruly crowd and had restricted the menu to make matters easier for all.

For starters we had a combo that promised to take us on a tour of the first section of the menu. Scorpion bites, or Jalapeno (please pronounce that as ‘halapenyo’ and not ‘jalapeeno’) and cheese, shredded chicken chimichanga (chicken wrap really), onion rings, flaming wings and veggie quesadillas (a folded flour tortilla stuffed with vegetables) would introduce our taste-buds to this menu’s arsenal.

The starters took a while but were served together and were of a much higher quality than I expected. With the exception of onion rings, an item that I happen to have a personal aversion to, the flavours were varied and interesting, presentation was quite decent and the portion size more than adequate.

My issue with onion rings has nothing to do with Tex-Mex or any other restaurant that serves them for that matter. Whoever thought of coating a ring of onion in batter, deep-frying it, and serving it as a bona fide menu item was just lazy.

We waited a while more for our main courses and once again were rewarded with food that is well above the average for themed restaurants and their ilk.

My ribeye was tender and juicy, cooked rare as requested, with a smoky charring on the outside and served alongside a rather sad portion of chips. The presentation could have done with some more attention but the steak itself redeemed any possible aesthetic shortcoming.

Also tasty and very generous was the portion of Cajun ribs and just as generous but much sweeter in flavour were the Kentucky glazed ribs. I tasted all these purely in the interest of a more comprehensive review and didn’t mind the extra work.

What I did not bother tasting was the grilled chicken breast. It is so inexpensive to buy and ridiculously easy to prepare at home that I will never touch the stuff in a restaurant purely on principle.

I was far too full by then to contemplate desserts but had been eyeing the bar since I entered the place. The bar occupies a fair portion of the outer half of the restaurant and seemed extremely well stocked.

I was joined at the bar by a number of individuals as inquisitive as I was and bearing the fortitude it takes to sample its fares in the name of research.

Just in time for supper, we vacated the place and made way for an even more rowdy group of revellers. The music had been turned up by then and instruments were being brought in for what promised to be a live music act.

Our meal had included a reasonable amount of wine and we paid €30 per person that we all felt was fair. The general consensus about the food quality was that while it could have been better presented, it had met our expectations.

The variety that the menus offer can keep almost any number of repeat visits interesting and the portions will pacify the most ravenous of diners.

If you are up for a long lunch or a fun night out, I think Tex Mex has added a very valid contender to the limited list of spots that offer such a variety.

The place is also quite large, so in the unlikely circumstance that the Gżira Army decided to invade Sliema, Tex Mex would be a perfect place for all of them to stop for food, drink, and make merry just as we presume the Germans did in Paris 70 odd years ago.

You can send e-mails about this column to ed.eatson@gmail.com or follow @edeats on Twitter. Or both.