Ed eats

The Compass
Tower Road,
Sliema.
Tel: 9928 6068

Food: 8/10
Service: 7/10
Ambience: 7/10
Value: 9/10
Overall: 7.5/10

A very, very long time ago, before the earth’s crust had solidified properly, I was wearing a horrible jacket and tie to attend a school that taught me much more than it intended to. It was meant to train me to become a useful tool that would render its services to our society. Some might say they managed with the ‘tool’ bit.

In addition, I must thank them for unwittingly turning me into something of a cynical sociopath. This isn’t as bad as it sounds.

Learning at a tender age that stereotyping is a wonderfully economical way of forming wholesale opinions about people around me, I complained about the entire institution that ran the school.

My mother, in her infinite wisdom, warned me never to judge an institution by a couple of particularly flawed members. She considered this an unfair assessment of the situation and suggested that I broaden my sample before condemning the lot. Today, I begrudgingly agree with her. They weren’t all rotten to the core.

Decades later, I hear those words played back to me whenever I’m proved wrong about one of my all-encompassing opinions. Kiosk food, for instance, has a very definite place in my mind.

The good thing about kiosks is their location because they pop up wherever crowds gather or walk past and serve food and drinks where there is precious little else around. The kiosks at beaches, for instance, supply cold drinks to hydrate me whenever I feel like lying down in the sand and having strangers’ kids kick it into my eyes.

When it comes to food, they are rather hit and miss. Hits are normally packaged. How can you go wrong with Twistees? Buying something they’ve prepared themselves is a more risky business. Buns that have been steaming inside their cling-film wrap since last Tuesday and that cost as much as half a dozen oysters are quite definitely a miss.

Am I right to judge this institution by almost every single member, I ask myself? Should I be happy when I buy a sandwich at a kiosk and discover that it tastes of Bloody Mary because the tomato has fermented? Should I be glad to prove myself right once again?

This kind of thinking is a little like finding the cap of your bottle of superglue to be completely bonded to the little bottle. Well, it proves that it really works, doesn’t it? In proof there is disappointment. That could easily be mantra if it were stated by some Eastern mystic.

I’d heard that there was a particular kiosk in Sliema that has made all sorts of changes to its menu and that they’re serving some pretty decent food. This kind of news takes a while to push its way through my filter that keeps kiosks firmly out of my list of places to visit.

Then I heard a little whisper about a chef having moved from one particular restaurant and into this kiosk and I was suddenly very curious. How could that happen? Surely he hasn’t dedicated his talents to wrapping ham and cheese rolls in cling film?

Off I headed one night and found the place. It still looks like a kiosk but has smart tables and chairs on either side. One side is more of a lounge, with water pipes and all. The other is a dining area that seems to host a mixture of ancient Sliema residents sipping coffee, young tourists quaffing beer and a few tables eating a proper meal.

We ordered across the menu, picking everything from a middle-Eastern burger to pan-seared salmon

A quick look at the menu was quite a surprise. Past pages of English breakfast and sandwiches one comes across a page of rather gourmet burgers, proper starters, interesting fresh pasta and even a section dedicated to real main courses. There’s a reasonable selection of pizza, too.

I ordered the mussels and a bottle of Sancerre. If I’m eating at a kiosk, I’m doing this properly. The mussels were excellent, the wine just as splendid, and the bill equally surprising.

I was smitten. I would return, I promised myself.

So I did. This time it would be a quiet meal, an early dinner as the sun set and cast a haunting magenta hue on the mirror-like sea below the defunct Chalet. Then I received a call and somehow ended up walking into the Compass’s dining area and asking for a table for eight, plus room for a buggy. The best laid plans of mice and Ed…

As had been the case during my previous visit, we were treated like royalty by the staff. The girls taking care of the front of house are like a bevy of Eurovision presenters, making every effort to smile all the time while battling with the English language, wrangling it into submission so that they made themselves understood. They did all this very successfully against the odds. And with eight of us at table, the odds are stacked very firmly against absolutely anyone.

We ordered across the menu, picking everything from a middle-Eastern burger to pan-seared salmon. I was having trouble because there were about six items I wanted but eventually settled for pasta with pulled pork and white truffle butter... at a kiosk. My head spun.

Other items we’d be eating were paccheri filled with Maltese sausage and Brie... at a kiosk. The one who wants to grow into an English tourist even ordered fish and chips. I suppose we sampled every page except the pizza. We’ll leave that to our next visit. And there will be more of those.

We waited a while for the food and I don’t consider this a bad thing. We’d ordered proper food so we couldn’t expect the immediate service one expects of kiosk food.

During our wait, the staff popped by regularly to make sure we had enough drinks, smiling politely all the while. Just past the little fence that separated us from the promenade, couples chased their kids, others walked by in perfect silence and yet others jogged like they were in a hurry for dinner. I can’t think of another good reason to maintain that pace.

Eventually, food was served around the table and we dug in. There were a couple of minutes of silence as we took in the fact that this kiosk had served very pleasantly presented dishes of food of a very high standard.

My pulled pork was just perfect, even if the pasta was very firm. I suspect mine was the only pasta that wasn’t actually fresh pasta so it was served quite al dente. The Maltese sausage and Brie was just as lovely. I had feared that the sausage would take over but the hands in the kitchen are evidently very skilled and balance had been achieved.

The seared salmon was equally enjoyable, almost crisp on the skin side and very moist inside, served alongside baby potatoes and a light salad. Another surprise was the devilishly delicious fish and chips. I didn’t have high hopes for this dish but it was a very far cry from the commercially battered slabs that are normally plonked into the fryer from frozen.

The final pleasant surprise was the bill for just over €17 per person. The reaction around the table was one of slight incredulity. We’d all eaten better food than we could possibly have imagined considering the venue. The fish and chips consumer said he’d definitely be visiting for lunch and that he looked forward to making the place a regular fixture, eating other items on the menu now that he’d seen what the rest of us ate.

I won’t take this experience as a benchmark for the rest of the kiosk institution. I’m pretty sure the rest are just as I expect them to be. I’m just thrilled to have found one glowing exception. And rather than sampling the rest in the name of research, I suppose I’ll keep my bearings pointed towards The Compass.

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