Ed eats
La Sfoglia
Merchants Street
Valletta
Tel: 2783 4105
Food: 8/10
Service: 8/10
Ambience: 9/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 8/10
My sympathies with the mayor of Paris during 1940, faced with the awful prospect of 100,000 uninvited (and foreign) troops, lie with his conundrum about what to feed them. Lest you think I’m jesting here, shortage of food turned out to be a rather pressing issue for the entire country.
La Sfoglia has understood what being a bistro is about. The emphasis is on a restricted set of daily specials
Yet it is true that I unwittingly find a food angle to almost anything. Let’s take the Valletta 2018 project. I know the basics, I know I had reservations about the appointed cultural ambassador, and I also know there are tomes to be read on the subject. My question when this subject turned up in conversation was: “What will everyone be eating in Valletta in 2018?”
I’m pretty sure the rest is being taken care of, so I need not worry about it. There are experts and budgets and even more experts to turn our magical city into the showcase it deserves to be. I’m the one worrying about food because someone has to do it.
Valletta plays host to a number of fabulous restaurants. It does, however, host some more dubious purveyors of cheap food sold at blindingly steep prices to unsuspecting tourists. Being a disgustingly shameless capitalist, I would never condone restricting or regulating these thieves, bar the obvious hygiene laws. After all, if someone is stupid enough to pay hefty sums for bad food, then they deserve to eat it.
My approach is one of a mildly interested spectator. Every time I visit the city, I eat something. And every time I form an opinion about whether I’d rather a tourist discovered the place or not, considering that the city should see a healthy influx once it makes it to the international spotlight.
A friend of mine told me he’d been to this place in Merchants Street and he’d had a lovely meal. I didn’t really have an opinion about the place, a cafe/bistro called La Sfoglia, and was a little sceptical. Then he went on to tell me that the chef who had been at Brown’s Kitchen had taken the kitchen under his wing and I showed a lot of interest.
My friend’s approach was admirable. He offered to join, subjecting himself to whatever was in store. If it wasn’t up to standard, he said, he’d suffer with me to atone for his errant recommendation.
The two of us planned a date. Six of us turned up. I’ve never quite understood numbers.
We approached the restaurant from the wrong end of Merchants Street, walking from my parking spot somewhere in the vicinity of the War Museum towards Castille. La Sfoglia is on the left when walking in this direction and I was a little doubtful. The place is tiny. A sign says that seating is available downstairs. A cellar, I thought. Great.
But my all-knowing friend, who I will call Gonzales for reasons known to him and very few others, just walked past the main door and towards the square that lies just outside the market building (Is-Suq tal-Belt). Here, neatly penned with verdant planters, lie a dozen beautifully set tables. It was as if I’d walked out of a wardrobe and into another world.
At table, the feeling is quite magical. I felt like we were in the centre of a European city, with the perfectly paved pedestrian area and the majesty of the buildings that have stood for centuries as a backdrop. The neat row of plants separating us from the main thoroughfare completes the picture.
A simple menu, chalked onto a large blackboard, shows that La Sfoglia has understood what being a bistro is about. The emphasis is on a restricted set of daily specials rather than a fixed and extensive menu. There is a slight skew towards seafood, a welcome one since we were all up for fish.
For starters we agreed to allow the chef to prepare what he thought fit. A dish with fresh fish was wheeled out and on top lay a rather large John Dory and an even larger stone bass. There was a little more fish than the six of us could eat so we decided to have the entire John Dory and as much of the stone bass as was necessary to make up the rest of the portion.
As we waited we were doted upon by the staff who pulled a table close to ours and placed wine and water coolers on it. I like thoughtful, non-intrusive service.
Wine is the only area that showed a glitch in the front of house. When we ordered the Greco di Tufo, a young man informed us that they had a lovely Pouilly Fumé, “like Sancerre but better”, he claimed. I pressed the game show buzzer for ‘wrong’. I pressed it again when, after I tasted the wine, he served the men (who were closer to him) before the ladies. It is the only complaint for the entire evening though.
The starters took a while but made up for the delay in quality and sheer quantity. Two large dishes of raw langoustines and lightly grilled scallops and prawns looked like they would do the trick. These were joined by two pots of clams, mussels and fasolari (cockles).
The raw langoustines were superb, as were the lightly grilled prawns, fresh enough to eat shell and all and actually enjoy the flavour. The scallops were slightly overdone for my liking, but then I am happy to eat them raw, so perhaps I’m not the best benchmark.
The molluscs had been cooked in a mild and well-mannered broth, so there was no salt overload that tricks many into reacting positively to a pot full of sub-par shellfish. I was happy with the clams and the mussels but found the cockles to be slightly tougher than I’m accustomed to. I blamed the clams themselves because there is evidently skill in the kitchen.
Next up was a huge tray of fish that had been filleted in the kitchen. I’m suspicious of this practice because it means the chef gets to sneakily enjoy the fish cheeks. On the other hand there was little he could do to avoid this when we’d presented a portioning challenge.
The stone bass was perfect. It had not been messed with and had been oven-finished to perfection, with a tureen full of fish jus served on the side so whoever preferred to leave the fish as it was intended could do so. The jus was quite masterfully made though, so even adding a bit was not a sin crying out to Poseidon for vengeance.
The John Dory had been treated to a herb crust, possibly overthinking the approach to this most sumptuous of fishes. The end result was fine though, with the firm flesh cooked to just within the upper limit of doneness. Sides were a welcome but quite uninspired addition – a non-issue with our focus on the huge portion of fish.
We ate until we were stuffed and paid €65 each, after which we were treated to a round of liqueurs and then another one. We walked out into a scene from a movie where the protagonists wake up to find that the rest of the world has suddenly vanished. Merchants Street, lit and looking splendid, was deserted. The rest of Malta’s population seems to prefer the boredom of their homes to this most unique of vistas.
I return to my question about what people will be eating in Valletta when they discover it in 2018 (or before, one hopes). If they happen to drop by La Sfoglia, I’m certain they’ll walk away with a positive impression of our cuisine.
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