Ed eats

Tax-Xiħa
Triq Congreve
Wied iż-Żurrieq
Tel: 2168 0684

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

Whenever I speak to foreigners about Malta, I’m very happy to boast about all of its virtues.

A depressed salad occupies one third of the place, the mussels and octopus are laid out in a central strip

I mention all the great aspects of our tiny nation and carefully navigate around the warts. Having lived here for more decades than I care to count, I have had the time to experience this nation’s shortcomings but don’t think that moaning about our country will do us any favours.

I also expect everyone to do likewise, in both words and actions. It is wonderful to hear the happy accounts of those who paid us a visit, and even more lovely to hear them promise to return.

That’s the way every tourist’s visit should be. After all, if you’ve travelled beyond our Lilliputian shores, you’ll know that there are plenty of reasons to visit other countries and these reasons are not exactly well-kept secrets.

Every time someone decides to dip into their pile of cash and buy a flight to Malta, they’ve made this choice over countless other possible destinations. And if we thank them by treating them well, they have every reason to return.

This keeps many families in Malta happily fed. I’m naturally referring to those families that depend on tourism for a living.

My gastronomic adventures place me in contact with a vast swathe of this tourism-dependent population and I’m surprised when things don’t quite work out. Treating tourists poorly is essentially biting the hand that feeds you. How can anyone be so spectacularly myopic?

Anyone who has travelled to the more popular destinations has experienced tourist traps. Whether you’ve fallen prey or not is another matter. They’re quite easy to tell apart from the better restaurants so one would normally not fall for them more than once.

Menus in eight languages, country flags and all, are a screaming warning for you to steer clear of the place.

Waiters in ill-fitting suits proffering the said menus are another red flag. ‘Tourist menus’, complete with very visible prices that sound too good to be true are in fact too good to be true. If you miss all these clues, then you deserve to suffer at the hands of these predators.

One fine Sunday afternoon, I happened to be close enough to Wied iż-Żurrieq to pop by for lunch. The weather was gorgeous. The scenery as I drive down never fails to catch me by surprise and make me wonder why I don’t visit more often. The ability to drive for 10 minutes and end up inside a postcard is one solid reason to mention when extolling the virtues of these islands.

Knowing I’d most likely be fed once I arrived is one good reason for me to keep my eyes on the road and only pay the melancholic little Filfla the occasional glance.

There is a handful of restaurants at the bottom of the valley and I never quite know which to pick so I leave it to a mildly educated guess when I get there.

If a place is devoid of patrons, I’m sceptical and walk past. If the place is heaving and has loud music playing above the chatter, I walk past. Both of these situations presented themselves so I did a fair bit of walking.

We eventually settled for a place called Tax-Xiħa and I wondered what that would sound like if pronounced by someone not entirely familiar with our language. The ‘x’ will most likely become a ‘ks’ sound. There’s a tourist-friendly tongue-twister right there, I thought.

An elderly man welcomed us in and said we’d be more comfortable at a table on the upper floor so up we headed. Quite a few tables were occupied, mostly by Maltese people in their Sunday best. I was pleased I’d donned one of my more remarkable Spiderman T-shirts.

The interior reminded me of a girl I once knew. Quite dashing from the waist up but you’d rather not let your eyes stray further south. The top half looks the part, with themed decorations and original bits and bobs from the fishing village that hosts the restaurant. From the waist down it is a bit of a mess, with a microwave on one of the chairs, an early-90s ghetto-blaster on its very own plinth and little else to recommend it.

We were greeted by a rather attractive young lady who brought menus and smiles. For the rest of the meal we were served by her colleague who was a little less jovial and not quite as happy to be doing the job.

I asked about fresh fish and she mentioned the lampuki, swordfish, tuna and salmon that are on the menu anyway. An alarm inside my head rang the ‘tourist trap’ bell so I thought I’d play safe. Fish soup for starters and what promised to be fresh mussels for main course.

Across the table, I sensed that the same alarm bells were ringing and this was confirmed by an order for more fish soup and the octopus stew. I wasn’t the only one playing safe. We added a soft drink each and peeked out at the view through windows that were crying out for a quick wipe.

Soft drinks were served in plastic bottles that we poured into bar-style glasses. We didn’t fare quite as badly as an adjacent table that had ordered a large bottle of water and was served a two-litre plastic bottle.

The fish soup was thankfully quite a traditional aljotta, a thick broth but not stew-like and surprisingly free from the one-flavour-fits-all stock that normally ruins this dish. This meant that the fish, sage, marjoram and heaps of lemon actually told their own tale. This was more like home cooking than commercial broth and each bowl contained a single mussel to break the surface tension. I hoped this would be the shape of things to come and snoozed the alarm bells.

Our main courses were on their way. This was announced by the attractive young lady, cursing loudly down the dumbwaiter shaft and explaining the situation to the kitchen in no uncertain terms. I looked around to see whether there were any young kids who would most certainly have heard the language she used but thankfully there were none.

Both main courses are laid out in the same way. A depressed salad occupies one third of the plate, the mussels and octopus are laid out in a central strip, while the remaining third is filled with barely edible chips. Pity about the chips because they didn’t look like the commercially cut ones so they once had a fighting chance. Poor oil and the wrong temperature had condemned them to an oily and over-fried shadow of what they could have been.

The mussels were decent if unremarkable and the octopus was itself tasteless but doused in a tomato sauce that handled itself quite well so all was not lost. We picked at the food and ate to keep hunger at bay but had no incentive to finish off our dishes.

A sign at the bar proclaimed the availability of ‘Homeade’ (sic) apple-pie, hyphen and all. Served with custard and cream. But judging by our main course, I wasn’t quite prepared to take another risk. Another sign informed us that the roof was upstairs. Indisputable.

We paid the bill for €37 – a very reasonable amount had more effort been put into the main course. I walked back to the car, once again admiring the view, and hoping that the view would offset the meal when tourists who had taken the same route spoke about it back home.

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