Ed Eats

Vago
Triq Ta l-Ibraġ
Ibraġ
+356 2766 2027

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

One way of categorising eateries is by dividing them into those that cater for a broad and far-reaching audience and those that predominantly target a more local set of patrons. And since Malta is tiny, local often means a shared postcode.

The Michelin guide takes a slightly different, if related, approach. The stars are an indication of how far one ought to be prepared to travel to eat there. One star means you should visit if you’re in the area. The unicorns that have three stars are actually worth crossing continents to get to by the guide’s measure.

This categorisation is luckily quite fluid. It is possible to jump from one to the other, either by choice or as a result of the quality of the experience. I’m pretty sure that legendary places like Rising Sun Bar in Marsaxlokk had never expected people to cross the island in pursuit of the food they served. But doing things right for long enough lands you there.

Then there are the ambitious restaurants that start out in the hope that people will travel the earth to get to their kitchen and wind up serving neighbours more than anything. This is a bit of a downgrade but it is not an irreversible process. Even Chef Ramsay was stripped of multiple Michelin stars and there he remains, terrorising any kitchen that will have him in it.

With the restaurants that are out to serve a broader public are those that are lucky or successful enough to occupy a high-traffic area. These can think like a local and actually wind up patronised like their better counterparts. I tend to chuck these into my mental box labelled ‘tourist trap’ unless they prove otherwise.

I’m usually suspect of those places that open up with seemingly local intentions. They don’t always have an incentive to perform in a way that is stellar. Out of a dozen blocks of inhabitants that surround any given restaurant, a few residents are bound to dodge cooking dinner and wind up making do with their favourite local. This means a stream of captive, if uninspired, patrons.

If this place were a stone’s throw away, I’d visit often

I’ve wound up at one of the places I’d typically label as local, meeting a friend for lunch at a café and restaurant that’s about a hundred metres away from his little palace. Curiously called Vago (there’s a reason for this written in the menu but I’m not quite sure I was convinced), the grown-up café seems to be the jewel in the crown of blocks around Ta’ l-Ibraġ church. I enjoyed lunch on both occasions and wondered if there was more going for it than the snacks I’d picked. The place has been thoroughly ‘designed’ so it looks good and has quite a cohesive theme running from the tables on the terrace to those on the mezzanine inside. The walls are covered in tiles with brightly coloured patterns and this somehow puts the words ‘Turkish’ and ‘Bath’ together. It works though and the place is actually quite pretty.

I visited one evening when I was in the area and was pleased to see that the place was practically packed solid. We made our way to the mezzanine and there were three occupied tables, leaving only a couple of tables empty. If this is what midweek looks like they’re doing something right.

The girl who greeted us downstairs and who had shown us to our tables was nowhere to be seen and about ten minutes after we’d arrived, a young man asked if we’d needed anything. I said that menus would be a good start and he gruffly sorted this out. The menus are designed to cater for a whole day of uninterrupted service so they begin with breakfast and snacks before progressing to salads, pasta, pizza, platters and burgers.

I was up for a bit more of a cooked meal and I remembered seeing a blackboard with the daily specialities on the way in. The man who’d brought the menus hadn’t told us about them and was nowhere to be seen so I ran down, snapped a photo with my phone, and ran back up. A minute later, the girl who had greeted it us initially was at our table, apologising profusely for the delay. She was so contrite and so polite that the slight annoyance at the wait vanished in a puff of friendliness.

She knew the food and was happy to discuss all the specialities on the board, explaining each dish and answering our questions about them. We wound up ordering the lamb rack and the gnocchi. The menu said they were served with mushrooms, bacon, cream, and tomato. I was a little hesitant because it sounded like quite a hefty combination but the better half was undaunted. Gnocchi are basically a form of pasta without wheat and so without guilt. Potato is a vegetable and vegetables are healthy. Wheat is a grass and so it is evil. Or so we’re led to believe.

We added a humble bottle of French red wine from a perfectly decent list considering the relative informality of the menu and sat and waited. Even with another three tables occupied, the wait was loud. The low ceiling and hard surfaces turn the mezzanine into a space that reflects sounds so everyone raises their voice a little. The chaotic music playing in the background doesn’t help either. Some form of soft furnishings can make the space a bit more welcoming.

We hadn’t ordered starters, mainly because there aren’t that many options in this area – it’s just not that kind of place - so we had quite a wait until our food was served. When it was, it was served with pride by the girl who’d been taking care of us. She helped sort out the table so that my massive wooden board and the large plate of gnocchi fit between bottles, cutlery and crockery. She wished us a pleasant meal and left us to enjoy it.

I tasted the gnocchi first, half expecting the worst. The ingredients had been pureed so there weren’t bits and pieces of ingredients. This is thoughtful when cooking gnocchi because they require a reasonably adherent sauce to cling to them. The sauce was a carefully balanced and skilfully seasoned liquid, and it enveloped the perfectly done gnocchi in creamy, bacon-scented, goodness.

I took another one. Then another. Then I realised that I’d abandoned my neatly arranged display of lamb, sauce, salad, and chips and that I was getting disapproving looks from the rightful owner of the dish. So I turned to my pile of lamb ribs. Seeing ‘lamb rack’ on the menu I’d been expecting a French rack but the ribs had been separated and grilled individually on hot irons so they tasted beautifully charred on the outside. They were done rare, as I like them. The meat itself, however, wasn’t great. They were a little tough and won on flavour rather than texture and moisture.

The chips were lovely and were happier with the sauce served on the side than the meat was. The sauce is a little too intense for the lamb and threatened to take away any last remaining flavour.

We wound up paying €30 each for the meal. This isn’t bad for the quality of the restaurant itself, the generosity of the portions, and the friendly service. It isn’t cheap either, especially if one considers the place a local. Well, I suppose it is a local – and a good one at that. If this place were a stone’s throw away, I’d visit often and figure out the chef’s forte. As it is I doubt I’ll travel to it but I will definitely pop by when I’m in the area.

You can send e-mails about this column to ed.eatson@gmail.com or follow @edeats on Twitter.