Malta & Gozo... I’ll have what Meghan’s having!
Feast like a royal for an evening. Brenda Power did in the heart of the Med
What would you choose for your last meal?’ is one of those questions that pops up frequently in interviews with foodies and celeb chefs. It is, I suspect, a bit like ‘How would you spend the Lotto jackpot?’ something we’ve all mused on at some stage.
So it was a let-down to discover that there’s a budget for last meals in most US states. In Florida, it’s $40. In Texas, it’s around $15, just enough for a Big Mac combo. Just as well, then, that I have no plans to commit a capital offence in a Southern state. Because neither will stretch to the cost of a return trip to Ta’ Philip’s in Gozo.
You know one of those meals that you imagine, when you’re thinking about your summer holidays, but that never really happen in real life? You’ve been sightseeing in the sunshine all morning, maybe you’ve taken a boat trip out to a small island and you are just nicely tired and hungry when you stumble upon a plain but promising-looking restaurant near the ferry port. It’s cool and bright, with wine racks lining the walls – always a good sign – with the chefs at work in an open kitchen. Even more promisingly, there’s a picture of Philip Spiteri himself with Meghan Markle – among a gallery of celebrity visitors – on the wall.
The menu is small and local, the prices are a lot less than you’d pay in an Irish seafront restaurant, but here’s the best bit. Philip breezes over, takes away your menu and tells you he just knows exactly what you want. No faffing about with unfamiliar ingredients and descriptions and, best of all, no risk of ‘food envy’ where you spend the entire meal coveting somebody else’s dish. If Philip’s suggestions are good enough for Meghan, you reckon, they’re probably good enough for you.
A bottle of perfectly chilled Gellewza Rosé arrives at your table, along with a white Vermentino. To start, there’s an antipasti of peppered sheep’s cheese and local sausage, salamis and olives and capers and sundried tomatoes and roasted aubergines. Then he brings a parade of different pastas and heaps your plate with a ladle each of nettle garganelli (a local stuffed pasta), wild boar pappardelle and goat’s cheese ravioli.
You think you’ve probably stuffed yourself until the main course appears. Braised rabbit, the Maltese national dish and a world away from the gamey meat you get here and roasted baby goat, both served in rich, robust, winey-herby-garlicky sauces, and a side of fat zucchini filled with pork and beef. And then there’s dessert, local date fritters and a selection of home-made ice creams.
Afterwards, they tip you onto your side and roll you gently down to the ferry port, a bit like Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka, where you can doze in the sun on the 30-minute sailing back to Valletta. Okay, I made the last bit up (there’s a bus), but otherwise Ta’ Philip’s really is the stuff of holiday fantasy.
The philosopher Alain de Botton reckons that the best holiday you’ll ever have is the trip you enjoy in your imagination as you pore over travel brochures and foreign menus because reality always lets you down. After a few days on Malta’s gastrotrail, though, I’d say the reality on the Mediterranean archipelago gets pretty close to those imaginings.
If food is one of your main considerations when you’re planning a break, then it’d be a real shame to overlook Malta. Lots of other destinations get 300 days of sunshine a year, too, and there are plenty of places where you can swim and snorkel, even though Malta’s underwater tunnels, caverns, reefs and arches have placed it fifth on the world’s top diving destinations.
Lots of countries have beautiful capital cities, although you’d be hardpressed to find a more spectacular sight than Valletta, with its baroque architecture rendered in honey coloured stone and its elevated views of the elegant cityscape framing the super yachts nestling in its shimmering Grand Harbour. Other countries can boast ancient walled cities but not many can say they were a location for Game Of Thrones, with fans of the hit series entranced by Mdina – or King’s Landing, as the ‘Silent City’ appears in the series.
And if you’re into Neolithic sites where, like our own Newgrange, the solstice’s sun strikes an altar with mysterious precision once a year, there’s Gozo’s 7,000-year-old Ggantija Temples, which the ancients believe could only have been constructed by giants, hence the name.
With more monuments per square kilometre than anywhere else in the world – and all within a short hop of some really memorable food – you’ll go a long way to do better than Malta. Better still, it’s just three and a half hours away on a year-round Ryanair service.
Culturally, Malta is a real melting pot of North African, Turkish, Grecian and Italian influences, not to mention the legacy of British rule that only ended in 1979. It’s also a deeply Catholic country, with 365 churches on the tiny island, and grottos and statues – some scarily handpainted with staring eyes – a regular feature of the towns’ narrow streets.
Watch out for the distinctive carved and enclosed wooden balconies on the older houses, a legacy of Arab rule – just about everyone
invaded Malta – that allowed the women to watch the goings-on below without being seen.
The food alone, though, is more than worth the trip. You’ll find rabbit on every menu, and a Maltese friend gave me her recipe for the perfect dish: jointed and panfried, then slowly stewed with peppers, onions, garlic and tomatoes until it’s falling off the bone.
Being a tiny island seafood is especially good. I’d never come across amberjack or meagre before, and can recommend carpaccio of both, although I’d be slow to order the stewed octopus with couscous in Noni in Valletta again: it was served as large, fivefingered joints in a dark sticky sauce. I felt like I was eating an old man’s calloused hand.
The local wines are excellent but, as the maitre d’ of Cent’Anni in Gharghur told us, the locals prefer imported wines so you might have to ask for them if they don’t appear on wine lists.
We visited San Niklaw vineyard, which must be the world’s only winery run by a practising paediatric surgeon – John Cauchi did his final exams in Belfast – and his pride and joy is a terrific Syrah Mourvèdre, although I’d happily crawl over hot coals for another glass of his Neptunus vermentino, even without the salmon tartare that he served alongside it.
And they won’t let you leave Malta without tasting the honey, especially since it gave the country its name: Melita, the Maltese name for the island, comes from the Roman word for honey and the same roots as our own Irish ‘mil’.
We visited Ray the beekeeper and he togged us out in suits that looked like salvage from the Soyuz II, with much Velcroing of ankles and wrists and necks. There was a tiny hole in the toe of my borrowed trainers (who knew you couldn’t wear flipflops to an apiary?) and Ray covered it with a piece of duct-tape, just in case. They’re angry little beggars, bees, when you’re stealing the honey they’ve made from eucalyptus and carob blossoms, but it’s worth risking their wrath for the taste.
I picked some up at the airport, along with a bottle of liqueur made from prickly pears, the cartoonish cacti that grows like weeds by the roadside. They serve it with prosecco to make a Maltese kir, but unlike the honey, its exoticism didn’t translate well to chilly Dublin.
And that’s the other thing about holiday fare: even when it lives up to your highest hopes, it always tastes better in your memory than in your kitchen on a grey Irish day. But that’s not going to stop me having a go at the rabbit stew, all the same.