Le Majoliche
Elia Zammit Street,
Paceville
Tel: 7933 9754

Food: 8/10
Service: 9/10
Ambience: 6/10
Value: 7/10
Overall: 7.5/10

I will start with an admission of fault. I walked or drove past the restaurant I’m writing about today countless times and dismissed it entirely for a couple of reasons. The first is its location. The second is its location. More about that in a moment – I’m not done taking blame yet.

I am blaming myself for leaping to the wrong judgement and failing to give a perfectly decent restaurant a fighting chance. I mostly put it down to having eaten out at more restaurants than I care to remember for longer than I can possibly recall. And, as I grow, I tend to be more set in my ways. This inevitability helps to cement an identity and a voice but it should not lock us into a strict narrative for as long as we live because what’s there to live for if not discovery? Where to draw the line remains the question.

I find that deferring judgement helps. It is instinctive for us to judge because it saves us from trouble. If we wondered what would happen when biting into the flank of a sleeping lion, our species would be long gone. But if we try something that’s probably safe, and eating food that’s been prepared for human consumption is usually safe, we can then judge it on its merits.

So, I keep reminding myself, I ought to defer judgement where even a tiny bit of credit could possibly be due.

On the other hand, I also take the blame for occasionally leaping to the wrong conclusions. I reviewed Terrone a while back and was favourably impressed. I have since learned that one should never go there for Sunday lunch. I tried it out and, after waiting for an hour for a raw antipasto, was told by the man who appears to own the place that it was my fault for going there on Sunday at lunchtime. Well, thanks for the tip kind sir. Pity your kitchen is great really.

In the case of Le Majoliche, the subject of today’s review, I never bothered because for a restaurant in Paceville to thrive, it usually does so by appealing to passing-by trade that need not necessarily return. Of course, there are notable exceptions. Fat Louie’s is in Paceville and remains one of a handful of restaurants that I return to as often as I can. Kuya’s close by and remains a consistent winner. So why did I never try Le Majoliche?

The second aspect to its location is that it resides before Paceville even starts, right next to language schools and a bus terminus. It’s in the spot I bought inedible hotdogs from as a teenager before I caught a ride home, tipsy as a sailor and just as discerning with my sources of midnight grub. What’s a Sicilian restaurant doing here anyway, I asked myself whenever I passed by.

I ought to defer judgement where even a tiny bit of credit could possibly be due

Then I heard from a man who knows good food when he sees it. It turns out he’s something of a regular at Le Majoliche and this suddenly turned my attention to it. If this guy visited more than once, there’s definitely something going for it. So off I trundled, on a quiet weeknight, to find out what’s in store.

It looks and feels like a Sicilian restaurant. I don’t know what it is but there’s something that cements them all, even if they don’t resemble each other by any strict definition. On the night we visited, there was something a little Andrea Camilleri about the two tables towards the back of the restaurant. Each table hosted a group of Sicilian men, speaking in a language that sounds like Italian from afar but, if you try to grasp the general gist of what’s going on, you’d most likely fail to understand more than a handful of words.

A young man greeted us and showed us to table. He quickly switched from Italian to English when he realised that the better half was pretending to understand what he was saying and simply nodding at the sound of his voice.

Along with a good kitchen, men like him are the lifeblood of this kind of restaurant. He’s polite and informal without being overbearing, knows the food and wine well, and managed to give us a wonderful sense of place with his endearing accent and helpful demeanour.

He explained the daily specialities, helped us with our food order, and was keen to talk about the wine. He first recommended the Bianco di Nera that I really wanted to have with our raw fish antipasti but I explained that, even if it is grounds for separation, the better half did not like sparkling wines. There’s a good Pinot Grigio, he said, even if it wasn’t Sicilian and hailed from the Veneto. I could sense a hint of contrition and admired him for it.

Our antipasto was the priciest item on the menu – the daily fresh seafood platter priced at €35. It was served quite quickly and occupied three separate dishes. This is the kind of dish that wins on freshness and the red prawns were just that, tasting like they would when caught within a day or two. Langoustines did what they usually do, appearing large and tasty while carrying precious little of their mild-mannered flesh. The oysters were some of the tastiest I’ve had in a while.

I have yet to learn how to tell the species from just looking at oysters, a skill I need to invest much more time and money into if I’m ever to be properly useful at describing them. The tuna tartare was just lovely, neatly diced into regular cubes, arranged into a neat, circular mound. The fish is fresh with the lively addition of dill and mint in just the right proportion. Even if the wine was tragically produced a thousand kilometres north of Sicily, its citrus and subtle green apple notes worked wonders with the tartare.

Next up were our pasta dishes. Our man had suggested we order the pasta we wanted and then see if we wanted to progress to main courses when we were done with them. It was wise advice.

The ravioli filled with fresh buffalo ricotta and dressed with a pistacchio sauce is quite far from the ravioli we’re used to, mainly for their ability to retain a very subtle flavour profile across the board. A fresh pasta case around creamy, buttery, buffalo ricotta makes for a parcel of yummy that’s then subtly flavoured with a simple pistacchio-based sauce.

Mine was a more robust dish. I’d gone for fresh pasta with a cuttlefish ink sauce and sea urchins. The pasta itself, with the slightly rough surface that fresh pasta has, creates a perfect surface for the thick, black sauce to adhere to. Neat cubes of cuttlefish flesh are tender to the point where they’ve almost lost their texture entirely. Once again the sauce is subtle, allowing the precious little sea urchin flesh to pop with its explosion of flavour that tastes like Poseidon had bottled all that the sea ought to represent. I’m an unashamed fan of sea urchins. I’d have to attend meetings if the flesh of these spiky blobs were psychoactive.

By this time I realised there was no way I’d make it to a main course so the cannolo I’d spied early on in the evening was going to fill any gaps in my belly. We ordered one to share and it was just as well. By now we’re used to being served a cannolo that looks like it fell from a great height. It was innovative in the 1990s and chefs around the world just can’t get enough of smearing the filling all over a plate and covering it with an ostensibly haphazard arrangement of smashed shards of the crisp shell. I’m not complaining as long as it tastes good and this one did. There were two fillings – a perfectly sweetened ricotta and an overly sweetened cream of pistacchio. Which was fine because I was thrilled with the former and the better half was enamoured with the latter.

The meal set us back almost €100, mainly propped up by that rather pricey antipasto. On any given night it would be perfectly possible to have one dish and a bottle of wine and spend less than €30 per person. We walked out pleased that I hadn’t let this one slip away. I made a mental note to return in the company of someone who likes Bianco di Nera and revisit the experience. After all, any excuse is a good excuse.