Ed eats

Legligin
119, St Lucia Street
Valletta
Tel: 2122 1699

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

By and large, we’re not an entirely original nation. If something seems like a good idea, particularly if the whiff of money is present, there’s bound to be a hundred pundits who’ll borrow the idea, irrespective of the size of the market. I call it the video store syndrome.

When the VHS hit the market, this was seen as a good thing. We could record episodes of 1980s’ sitcoms and watch them twice if we hated ourselves sufficiently. We could even rent movies that weren’t dubbed in Italian by the same five voice-over artistes. So everyone and their canine pets opened a video store. There was no assessment of location, market size, or pricing models – if my cousin’s sister’s boyfriend had a garage he wasn’t using, I’d turn it into a video store.

So by the time there were enough VHS players in people’s homes to justify a few video stores around the islands, there were five of them in every village square. Then it was the era of the DVD, and the ones that survived the first culling switched to DVD rental. Then it was satellite receivers. The common thread is the sheer unoriginality of the approach – one person makes money and enough people copy the idea until the market is spread so thin that everyone loses.

Then came the wine bars. The first few wine bars seemed like a good idea. Then you blink, yawn, nap, and wake up to a 100 of them. Every eatery that called itself a wine bar served those confounded platters of stuff bought from the closest deli, with a couple of grapes and a breadstick to help elevate a cheese board into a menu item worth paying for.

The wine menus ranged from excellent to comical. The ones with good wine menus survived longer than the ones with those silly single-supplier affairs that were more insulting than appealing. That’s the beauty of a market. It will winnow the weak from the wonderful so that only the better ones survive.

The sheer volume of them meant that the average experience was miserable – packed little places that were overly ambitious with the number of seats that could fit into the converted front room of a townhouse, the smell of damp, wine that’s worth less than the glass bottle than contains it, and those damned platters. This made me avoid wine bars for quite a while.

Now that there’s something else to copy (any restaurant that can fit the word ‘concept’ into the front page of the menu seems to be the order of the day), the true wine bars are the ones that remain and I visit a couple of favourites when I have the time. Legligin is one of the ones that have survived and, somehow, I’d never got round to giving it a shot.

The place describes itself as ‘Wine Bar and Bistro’. It turns out to be much more wine bar than bistro but this doesn’t really get in the way. It burrows into the sub street-level front rooms of a wonderful Valletta house, complete with broad stone arches, that has been tastefully and simply restored. It is just as simply furnished and has an appropriately themed, if slightly kitsch, set of crockery that’s decorated with floral patterns.

There’s a blackboard on the wall that offers a tasting menu for €23.50. This is described rather vaguely as a sample across ‘Mediterranean and other’ dishes. The girl who had greeted us now brought a wine menu. The only food option is the tasting menu. I asked what it consisted off and she smiled knowingly. I was new to the place. She was graceful about this and explained that it would consist of a number of courses that would include a soup, a number of appetisers, and yet another list of fish and meat dishes. These vary according to what’s fresh.

A kitchen that keeps me curious is one worth returning to

I don’t remember going from cold to hot in such a short time. I was terrified when I’d figured there was no choice. By the time she had delivered her speech, I was about to run to the kitchen and beg. Well, two of those please.

The wine menu was not so easy. The list is a very democratically selected and priced one, so there are no wines priced above €50. Plenty of the better wines were stickered as unavailable. And the first two I chose had run out of stock. I finally picked a Tuscan red that practically hit the price ceiling that night at €27.

I imagined that a set tasting menu wouldn’t take long to serve. In fact, food turned up throughout the time we sat there with near-perfect timing. This pace really contributes to an experience during which one is tasting a large number of tiny dishes, each with their own flavour, texture, and temperature.

It started with a basket of fresh Maltese bread and a small bowl of lovely olive oil. I asked the young lady whether it was local and she said that this was Sicilian. A minute later she returned with another little bowl, this one containing local oil. This set the tone for the service that evening, one of polite and friendly efficiency.

Next up was a little pot of vegetable soup with a ladle in it. We poured our own portions and this made the soup feel even more homely. It is as close to a home-made minestra as I’ve tasted and it helped us forget all about the miserable weather outside.

As soon as our table was cleared, a number of dishes started to head over. Caponata, spiced olives, alioli, dried ġbejna, and Maltese sausage in tomato sauce soon jostled for attention and I struggled to sort them in order of what I thought would be increasing complexity.

Once again fear set in. This spread seemed like the stuff served at tourist traps that have massive A-boards outside claiming ‘Maltese food’. And once again, a forkful was enough to turn fear into enthusiasm. Every item at table had been carefully and lovingly prepared, like someone had deconstructed the dish and rebuilt it with mastery while preserving its soul.

Following this spread, the dishes turned up individually, giving us some one-on-one time with them as they deserved. The octopus was served with plenty of garlic and olive oil, cooked so it was beautifully tender. Just as lovely was the poached sea bream with butter, lemon and a lot of salt. This is in no way a restrained dish and I’d have probably not cooked it this way myself but the intensity worked, particularly after the highly involving starter courses.

There hadn’t been a single slip so far and the mussels were just as accomplished, cooked in white wine with plenty of garlic and black pepper. Then the beef olive turned up. Maybe I’m spoiled here, but this was the first time I thought I could have done without one of the courses. Then the pork meatballs... they fared better than the beef olives but were nowhere near the level of the fish dishes. Having said all this, I polished off both courses.

The third little bump in the road turned up in the form of penne with walnut and lemon sauce, a weird inclusion at this point in the meal with its cream-based sauce. It actually tasted pretty decent but I’d eaten quite a bit already so didn’t make the effort to finish the dish.

There was one dish left, a lovely concoction of pork, honey and rosemary. And when we’d consumed this, our hostess asked if we’d like any more food. The pork had been the last item but, if we felt like more food, they’d bring more our way. I appreciated the offer but couldn’t possibly eat more food, especially when there were three kinds of chocolate truffles listed on a board just in front of me.

A portion consists of three each of ginger, cinnamon and chilli, and cranberries and Cointreau truffles. They were served with a glass of limoncello and I decided I’d try and order nine of the ginger ones next time.

So the wine bar and bistro has fewer wines than it should and is a tiny (if daily) à la carte menu away from being a bistro. This won’t deter me. We’d been treated kindly and the kitchen has me curious about what’s in store as the seasons change. And a kitchen that keeps me curious is one worth returning to.

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