Ed eats

Emperor of India
Elia Zammit Street,
Paceville
Tel: 2137 4595

Da Pippo’s Trattoria
136, Melita Street
Valletta
Tel: 2124 8029

Food: 7/10
Service: 5/10
Ambience: 5/10
Value: 6/10
Overall: 6/10

As a regular reader of this column, you are entitled to a volume discount. This week only, buy one and get one free.

There is no delicate balance of individual flavours, no presence of fresh, seasonal herbs, but every sauce does a good job of matching its description

An exclamation mark is probably warranted but, as a regular reader, you might have picked up my aversion to that particular punctuation mark, probably because it is overused and the worst offenders use two or three of them at the end of a sentence.

As Terry Pratchett once wrote, multiple punctuation marks are the clear sign of a sick mind and, sick as mine may be, it has yet to succumb to this particular affliction.

This double bill is the result of my having two experiences within a very short time that, as different as they might have been, left me with an almost identical reaction by the end.

The initial circumstances were drastically different. One was a dinner service in an Indian restaurant in Paceville with members of the family. The other was lunch, with colleagues and ex-colleagues at a trattoria in Valletta. So how could the result have been the same?

Take your seat, turn off your mobile phones (and pagers, as the anachronistic theatre announcement goes) and join me on this stage that sees a variety of interesting characters.

I will start with the Emperor of India. Situated in the nether regions of this teenage wasteland, the restaurant has been around since I was leaving my teens behind. And to show me how much I have aged since then, the restaurant has recently undergone a facelift.

It has all the obligatory bits and bobs that seem to make every Indian restaurant look indistinguishable.

We were greeted at the door by staff members who evidently hailed from the subcontinent but insisted on dropping Maltese words and phrases in an endearing accent.

Seated, we almost had enough menus to go around and started to go through page after page of what we in the West have come to expect of ‘Indian’ food.

Most of it has actually come from England, by virtue of the memory of what the adventurous colonisers of continents brought back with them from their travels. India is mind-bogglingly vast and has an appropriately staggering variety of cuisine.

What made it to the West is a critically limited selection of sauces that are served with chicken, beef, lamb and fish. Thankfully, the Emperor of India menu also includes a number of vegetable-based dishes and this is much more closely linked to the reality that pervades in the region.

We chose a main course each, and poppadums to start with, convinced by a member of the party that it would be enough to go round. To this we added two portions of naan bread and pilau rice that would provide a base to all the sauces that characterise this kind of kitchen.

The selection of food was mainly taken care of by my sister who had dragged us there in the first place. She has declared her undying love for the place, claimed that she could easily have three meals a day, seven days a week there, and knows the menu better than I know the contents of my wallet.

She recommended lamb kadai, rogan josh, daal, lamb vindaloo, chicken madras and prawns poliwada, going into a description of each that sounded like she had worked in their kitchen for years.

Poppadums and three little bowls containing a mint yoghurt sauce, pickled onions and a very sweet chutney were served quite quickly by the over-friendly waiter. There were no surprises here.

We dispatched them quite quickly, eager to get to our mains. These were also served quite quickly and, as Indian restaurants go, were reasonably good.

There is no delicate balance of individual flavours, no presence of fresh, seasonal herbs, but every sauce does a good job of matching its description.

My real gripe was the vindaloo that, although ordered as very hot, did not match the heat of some of the other dishes.

The sister was right about the portions. We’d ordered more than we could consume. Seated in the uninspiring interior space, lit a little too brightly to be intimate and with waiters acting like Rajesh on the Big Bang Theory when he’s had a bottle of beer, I couldn’t help wishing I could be out of there sooner rather than later. It was the excellent company that made up for this.

A couple of days later I was having lunch at Trattoria Da Pippo with three guys who are great company, love good food and who I don’t meet as often as I would like. The combination was one worth looking forward to.

We were seated right next to the chilled counter that would be just as happy at a butcher as it is at Da Pippo. It contains almost all of the ingredients that will form the day’s main courses.

To say we were served would be too generous for the way we were treated. Fresh bread and a central plate of olives, sundried tomatoes and butter beans were placed in the centre of the table and our orders were taken in fits and starts.

I never really want a menu at a trattoria and Da Pippo lives up to this. What I want is someone who loves what he’s about to serve and takes some time to describe it, then take my orders.

We got no love and no patience. We tried to place our orders with a man who came and went and spoke to other people as we made desperate attempts to attract his attention. “I will have the veal, served…”, and he’s off, whacking someone else’s shoulder at another table and taking their order for coffee.

We finally managed to order and began to make desperate attempts at having a conversation between ourselves. Everyone in the restaurant seemed to be having a yelling contest and we eventually gave up on making any real headway, resorting to cupping our hands and speaking into each other’s ears when we really needed to communicate.

Just as we had warmed to the excellent bread, lovely oil and the mix of savouries in front of us, our plates were whisked away, literally mid-forkful in the case of the other Ed who sat across the table. We stared at each other in surprise and then shrugged it off with a smile as a quirk of the place.

Our main courses were served in what is quite likely record time. This is probably the strongest point in favour of Da Pippo. The selection of food is limited to what is fresh and available and this makes preparation speedy enough to make sure you can be in and out within an hour, normally the time available for a quick lunch in Valletta.

This also accounts for the speedy and brusque service that has no time for niceties and trades these for shorter serving times.

While I ate my veal rib-eye, an excellent cut served rare at my request, I saw the main courses being ‘assembled’. The man who had taken our orders rummaged around in the counter, picked slabs of meat (no utensils here – one hopes his hands are clean) and chucks them onto the plates that make their way into the kitchen.

While I watched he put a mixed seafood dish together, putting a fistful of mussels, another fistful of clams, and a few bits of fish into a pan that he then passed into the kitchen. I stared with what was almost admiration at the nonchalance of his ingredient-tossing.

In both cases, the charm of the characters that run the show have the ability to attract clients or put some off in equal measure. I am not one who goes crazy for the added attention that hyper-familiarity provides, so I am in a minority that is more likely to be put off by this friendliness and quirky charm.

Both places were buzzing when I was there, attesting to their popularity. And in both cases I walked out not quite enamoured, needing a more soothing service, more distinctive food or at least excellent value to leave me dying to go back for more.

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