Bohini
Mġarr

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

I am refused an aperitif. I am flatly denied a Campari orange because they’ve run out of oranges. This is a find, I think to myself greedily. Any place that snubs processed orange juice from a carton is always a winner in my book.

I glow with happy anticipation as I take in the small, masculine space that is Bohini, a newly opened cafe tucked away behind the church in rural Mġarr. Nicely arranged, it is dark, moody and full of concrete character and copper accenting. The smiling, unpretentious staff buzz about enthusiastically.

At Bohini they believe in real food; in fresh, seasonal, locally-sourced ingredients. This is what they strive to showcase.

Governed by the seasons, the simple lunch menu comprises mainly light dishes and changes daily. Largely starring vegetables, there is a heavy leaning towards the vegetarian and vegan. Today there is a selection of soups, salads, healthy sandwiches and pasta dishes. We contrive to order practically everything – because we are hungry and in the name of research, of course.

Despite the veg-forward ethos, meat and fish haven’t been entirely overlooked.  The beef lasagna comes in a shamelessly monstrous mound. For all its enormity, it is rather mediocre. The sheets of pasta have over softened and do not hold their shape and there’s no golden, browned crunchiness to the béchamel-clad top layer.

The quantity of mince meat is generous but the ragu alla bolognese does not quite boast of  that simmered, salacious savouriness we all long for in beef lasagna; the kind that brims with a rich ripeness and oozes umami. And in the absence of that, a lasagna can never be truly great.

The dish of penne ai funghi tartufo is reasonably good but it’s not about to make any Italian cry and pine for the homeland. Slivers of ham are tossed through the overworked, creamy sauce.

The pumpkin soup has a nice, creamily thick consistency to it. Other than that it is somewhat bland, served with a swirl of coconut cream that does little to inject flavour.

There’s a baguette with gin-cured salmon. Cured in-house and using only the freshest of salmon, the gin proves to be a fantastic flavouring for the fish, giving the salmon a more sophisticated taste with a salty-sweet edge.

Light and delicious, it is basically boozy gravadlax; a twist on traditional gravadlax, and there’s something miraculous about it. The salmon we try has attained a delicious light cure; the forces of salt, sugar, pepper and dill all at play, resulting in a salmon that is glowing pink, silky textured and not overly salty.

Nevertheless, the sandwich itself is somewhat disappointing. The crunchiest of poppy seed baguettes, lovely in itself, comes crammed with the salmon and full of notes of crisp vibrancy from the rocket, cucumber and tomato.

But, there’s a big niggle. The sandwich is dry as a bone. The salmon could have been paired with any number of condiments. However, there isn’t even the daintiest dribble of olive oil, let alone a whiff of sour cream or lemon.

I applaud Bohini for utilising only quality produce and ingredients at their peak, but the execution has been poor

The very same gin-cured salmon is the star of one of the salads – a salad that is joyless and utterly morose.  For the most part, it is simply a heap of iceberg lettuce and rocket leaves; crisp yet soul-killingly boring.

There is no salad dressing, no light vinaigrette, no maceration, no margination – nothing to jolt it all together and lubricate it. The flaked, oven-baked salmon is good, dusted with black sesame seeds. There’s the odd sweet cherry tomato to be dug out and crunchy strips of aubergine, skin-on, half-heartedly piled on. They bring nothing to this insipid, undressed salad.

We sigh, wishing we could be lost in the pleasures of lunch. Nothing has been wholly successful. Despite the generosity of portion sizes, there has been nothing to swoon about.

I applaud Bohini for utilising only quality produce and ingredients at their peak, but the execution has  been poor. We sip our lemon and cucumber-infused water and wait to see what dessert brings.

There are stout, little vegan protein balls. I sample one with my coffee. Dusted with coconut shreds comes a sticky ball of turmeric, lemon and almond. The latter two remain virtually undetectable.

The turmeric, that most trendy of roots, is not. The ground turmeric, with its vibrant, deep golden colour, is overpowering to the point that it is all sharp, biting bitterness. It’s hardly a subtle turmeric hit. This ball is spiky and unpleasant.

Then, there’s a vegan lavender crunch bar. There’s definitely crunch and there’s definitely lavender – too much of it for my liking. I enjoy subtle floral hints in desserts, but this is far too perfumed. The lavender overpowers the dark chocolate and so I cannot enjoy the sweet as much as I wish to.

I experience the oddest sensation. I feel I have swallowed a soap bar. Something that does make a non-vegan like myself immensely happy is the raw vegan lemon cheesecake. Naturally sweetened with agave syrup and cranberries, it is simply lovely, full of crunch and texture. Using entirely raw ingredients, the cheesecake’s crisp base comprises raisins, dates and nuts. It is delightful.

The food at Bohini is, however, not altogether strictly clean per se. Incongruously juxtaposing the vegan desserts is a large corner of the display counter stacked with the most unhealthy looking non-vegan cakes, muffins and cake pops.

For all their  clean-eating probity, Bohini certainly has no fear for the debauched pleasures of cream and sugar. And, although they may well be artery-clogging, these cakes are certainly no killer cakes.

There’s an Oreo cake that looks positively ill. It is awfully dry and quite inedible. The cream cheese frosting is stale. Apart from the vegan cheesecake, a plump blueberry muffin, tender of crumb and moist of centre, is the only other sweet that we find agreeable.

Bohini haven’t quite hit the ground running. They certainly have well-founded ambitions – the heart is there, the will is there, their ethos is great. They would like to think that they are serving food that will make you feel insanely good about yourself. This isn’t in effect quite true yet.