Saturday, June 07, 2008

Dieters guide to salads around Malta (3)

It was Friday yet again, and yet again I was sitting at a restaurant, "in" our beautiful capital city, very very close to the water. The first thing that struck me (if you exclude a happy-go-lucky coackroach taking a strall from one dustbin to the other and amazingly not being flattened to death by anyone of the many feet (and respective owners) around) ... was the enormity of the dining area, which was indeed packed to the last chair. Having said so, the second thing that struck me was not that no one except me had noticed the above mention HUGE cockraoch, but that there was an average of 1 waiter per 15 tables. It doesn't take an atomic calculator to deduce that the service was comparable to the speed of a limping, sleeping snail.
How long did it take for the drinks to find their way to our lips? Precisely an hour, and we only had a "bottle" (barely enough to fill a glass) of water, and a soft drink. I did not blame the waiters, they were keeping up all too well with the chaos and out of proportion clientele. There just should have been many more hands on deck.
As form of enetertainment, while we now waited for our food, we had quite a loud table of people, who laughed loud, talked loud and complained loud. Mind you, I have nothing against a hearty complaint, but it has to be audable only by the waiter, in order, first of all, not to embarrass him/her and secondly not to be labelled, hehh, loud.
So finally our food was delivered to our table. His plate really smelled and tasted (yes.. i allowed myself a bite) delicious. The sauce of this plate of pasta was divine.. maltese sausage and the wonderful aftertaste of wine. Sublime. My salad was also very well presented, and not over adorned with dressing, a plus for the chef who kept in mind that people who order salads are people who aim at eating something with less fats than a normal plate. It was nothing complciated really, just an assortment of lettuce, tomatoes olives and feta..and that's exactly what I was looking for. I barely finished my plate. Another plus for this one was that the feta was not the marinated type, but it was fresh tasting rather then squashy and sour.
Unfortunately I was freezing cold after over 2 hours of sitting in the fresh night air, so we quickly summoned the bill and ran off home. If I had to grade this place it would be an eight on ten for food, but two on ten for service. That would give it an over all grade of five on ten. A shame really.