The menu at D’Office focuses on rather traditional items, some of which are Maltese.

Ed eats

D’Office
Archbishop Street
Valletta
Tel: 2722 1475

Food: 5/10
Service: 5/10
Ambience: 8/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 6/10

Some arguments are just not worth starting. They go around in circles because everyone’s right – or wrong – and the truth is probably somewhere on the equator, at equal distance from both poles. We spell a word this way, while they spell it another way. Surely we’re right because our version came first.

The same goes for pronunciation. The British way versus the American way is a perennial point of contention, as a common language often proves more divisive than the vast Atlantic Ocean does. Meanwhile, just off the coast of one of these bickering parties, Jamaica gets along quite happily with their very own pronunciation of English that works perfectly well for the idyllic islands. They didn’t even bother with a peaceful linguistic revolution. They just keep calm and carry on.

My position isn’t quite as neutral as I’d like it to be because there are language issues that bother me. I’m not referring to pronunciation because I don’t speak like a member of the Royal Family so I can’t cast the first stone. Orthography is another matter, particularly when it prevents the message from getting across. Crazy spelling of words because they’re thought to look cooler is one example of orthographic freedom that I struggle with. There can be no justification for spelling ‘crazy’ with a ‘k’ at the beginning to make your ‘crazy sale’ sound more enticing. Replacing ‘the best’ with ‘d best’ isn’t going to make me think you’re unbearably hip, largely because replacing ‘the’ with a single letter isn’t remotely close to the way the word is pronounced.

“Ah, but you’re contradicting yourself!”, I hear you exclaim. Have I not just mentioned Jamaican pronunciation as a perfectly valid linguistic idiosyncrasy? Then shouldn’t we Maltese be entitled to pronouncing ‘th’ as ‘d’? Perhaps we are entitled to pronounce it that way if we want to and if we still make ourselves understood. But that is no reason for this to have an impact on our spelling.

So you can imagine that it was with a little discomfort that I walked into D’Office in Valletta. They might have a perfectly good reason for this unorthodox approach, errant apostrophe and all. If so, I really would like to know the reason as soon as I walk in or else I’m bound to consider the name the way I consider a little bit of gristle in an otherwise acceptable meal. It’s there, I can shove it aside, and yet it could have been avoided in the first place.

The first time I walked in was a warm summer’s night and I hadn’t thought I’d need a reservation. It turns out I did, so I tried a couple of months later and, once again, there wasn’t an empty table in sight. The last time I tried I was lucky. Third time is, sometimes, the charm.

We were met by a most welcoming young lady who, with a permanent smile on her face, guided us to a vacant table. She was so polite with us that we felt we were in for a very pleasant evening and actually commented about how pleasantly we’d been greeted.

One frequently visits a bistro for the daily specialities, since this is what separates these eateries from an ordinary restaurant

She returned with menus, the wine menu, and an addition with the day’s specials, and then gave us some time to make up our minds.

The menus aren’t an extensive or a comprehensive affair. This is a good thing because D’Office (and how it hurts to type that) is a bistro and they are living up to their name. One frequently visits a bistro for the daily specialities, since this is what separates these eateries from an ordinary restaurant. The specialities included fresh fish and a couple of different ravioli fillings. Like the rest of the menu, the focus seems to be on rather traditional items, some of which are traditionally Maltese.

I’m wary of very Maltese items on a menu because these are sometimes the hallmark of a tourist trap, especially when the restaurant is located along the main tourist thoroughfares. Still encouraged by the popularity of the place, I dismissed these notions and focused on assembling my meal.

It looked like I was the only one having starters that evening as a large and late lunch had taken its toll on my better half’s capacity for food. I was tempted by a couple of items I don’t encounter as much as I’d like to. My choice was between a vitello tonnato and a dish of ‘surf and turf’ fritters. I took the safer way out and picked the fritters.

For main course, the lightweight was going to give the beef olives a stab. The description reminded her of the way her mum cooks them and this, to me, would have been the reason not to attempt to order them at a restaurant. The bar has been set far too high.

The main courses – beef, chicken, rabbit, pork and fish all making an appearance – didn’t quite inspire me even if a couple of them sounded like mildly interesting varieties on the usual recipes. I finally settled for the rabbit ravioli, mainly because they were on the list of specials.

A young man approached our table, stood rather stiffly, and said: “Ready.” It was more of a statement than a question, like a device indicating that it is ready for the next instruction, so I thought I’d misheard and threw a cautious: “Pardon?” “Ready to order?”, he shot back.

It felt more hostile than anything so I quietly mumbled our order trying not to anger him any further. I was quite taken aback by the stark contrast in service level. He returned quite soon with a basket of lovely fresh bread and a little container of butter with sundried tomatoes in it. He didn’t seem happy to have done this either and I wasn’t really upset to see him leave.

Once again, the service was so extraordinary, this time in a bad way, that we ended up commenting about it to each other. When he came by with the wine he’d mellowed out a little and served the wine in a way that showed he’d been extensively trained. This was reflected throughout, particularly with the attention he paid to every task he performed such as making sure we always had the right cutlery. Sometimes people just have a bad day and I hoped something would happen to make him smile before the night was over.

The fritters were served piping hot on top of a fresh salad. Every one of them was quite lovely and having four variants kept the dish interesting throughout. There was pork belly, crab, prawn and mushroom, each cooked to a consistency where they just held together so every bite was moist and packed with flavour and texture. If this was a sign of things to come, I could very easily warm up to this place.

The contrast in service almost kept its rhythm when the main course turned out to be a couple of leagues below the quality of the starters. My rabbit ravioli were lacking in the filling-to-pastry ratio and the sauce was a technically correct brown liquid that tasted like it had more than its fair share of commercial stock in it.

The beef olives were just about fine but not particularly good examples of what is something of a national speciality. The filling had been rendered into sausage-filling consistency and the sauce lacked the flavour, or at least the salinity, to help carry the stuffed meat.

Rather uncharacteristically I followed up with a dessert in the form of a little cassatella that was pretty decent but nowhere near special.

We paid what I thought was just about fair at €60 for the meal, including an inexpensive bottle of wine. The restaurant is cosy and welcoming, particularly on a chilly, winter night. Half of the service was quite remarkably good, and I’ll put the other half down to a pretty bad day. The food showed potential but also that tourists are probably on the radar here. It took me three times to get to try D’Office out though, so I suppose their business won’t suffer if I don’t pay it another visit quite soon.

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