Mona's Meals | Sunday, 15 February 2009

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The Family Silver

Of a Sunday morning, when settling down to write this piece every week, I like to listen to an eclectic mix of music courtesy of Fallout Boy, Lady Gaga and Etta James. Post teenage years, music has become something that blocks out the rest of the world while in the car (Amy MacDonald), on long-haul flights (Kate Bush) and at work (anything the iPod shuffle decides to play).
Yet what is invading my brain this morning is none of these. In spite of La Lady churning out Poker Face, I cannot get Kami Kami Kamikaze lover….heart heart heart, out of my head, much like Kylie couldn’t get you out of hers either. If the whole thing gave me a Kylie body and a man like Olivier Martinez, well, I wouldn’t mind. But this; this is just driving me nuts.
I even found myself intoning - calling it ‘singing’ would be stretching the term a little too far - it while making tea. When I managed to stop, the space vacated in my brain was instantly occupied, squatter-style, by the rictus Joseph flashed whenever he stopped faffing with the violin and started to growl.
Moreover, during our lovely Song For Europe contest, the second he got out of this (as aptly described by Matthew Vella last week) ‘robotic’ mode, Joseph immediately went back to ‘playing’, twirling around his fellow musicians like a piper, distributing his aura all over them magnanimously. He did this in trousers which were so tight I hoped, for his and his equipment’s sake, they contained lycra, and a cowl neck elastic-infused glimmering, sleeveless jumper, all set to show off his many hours at the gym.
From what I can understand of the Song for Europe, and I admit I haven’t wasted too many brain cells on this one, the foreign judges voted for the ‘super-finalists’, after which the local audiences voted for one of them.
Which is why Joseph Violins never made it. If we had left it to the masses to vote, he’d have been up there like a shot. Whenever I hear yet another radio call-in harping on about how much ‘talent’ we have, I always want to scream. No we don’t. We have the same very small quantity of performers per capita as other countries. Here, mediocrity manages to shine through because it inhabits such a small pond.
In another world, Joseph would be a corporate lawyer and that’s it. He would not ‘present’ transformation programmes and jump in front of the ‘protagonista’ assuming more importance than she does in every single awful shot, whether it’s her ‘before’ pictures or her ‘big reveal’. In an ideal world, someone would tell him that he’s not cut out for television.
Joseph as ‘celebrity’ sums up the Maltese character. There are few anthropologists around but I sometimes wish Boissevain were still here studying our habits, our ‘celebrities’ and our attitude towards them (sycophantic, wide-eyed, odd). Instead, one of our few remaining anthros has set up camp in a restaurant in Mdina.
In so doing, in fact, he has possibly re-written the story of the Maltese aristocracy, and then, maybe not, seeing as Muffy has done the same thing at Palazzo Parisio. Unlike Muffy, the learned doctor knows much about human nature and its habits, much about the theory of food in culture, and probably nothing at all about being a restaurateur. And at Gattopardo, it shows.
‘This is cute,’ I told the GBF when we came across it in Mdina. ‘Yes, and dirty,’ he replied, pointing at the sign telling us we were at an ‘Art Gallery and Bistro’ which could hardly be deciphered through the dust and grime. Inside, the bar area is a hapless mishmash of things. This could be in France if they had bothered to organise it a little, but, hold on, is that ‘table’ on the side actually a chest freezer? ‘Where’s the art?’ GBF said as we entered, taking the ‘Art Gallery and Bistro’ on the tag literally and not bothering to be enthralled by the etchings hanging on wall. ‘X’inti hamalla u ma tifhimx, hi!’ I told him.
In fact, this is definitely the ground floor of the anthropologist’s house; it takes intimacy to a whole new level. In what was once a very wide vaulted entrance (admittedly in the kind of house both the GBF and I would kill to inhabit, albeit, seeing as we have different partners, separately) leading to the back is - now, hold on, is that right, oh yes it is - a series of garden chairs, the kind that normally fold up against a wall.
The paint is peeling off the edifice and nobody has done any restoration for a long, long time. There are swathes of tapestry on some of the wall, Cyrillic on the menus, and what seem to be African statues dotted around. Although, taking the house’s ownership into consideration, the latter may have come from anywhere else on his research and travels. I’m a food writer not an anthropologist (although I did, before somebody quips something stupid, study anthropology at University) so I might be getting their provenance wrong. Let’s consider this to be culinary/sculptural field work, and I will remain open to suggestions.
The point is that this is an attempt at a Greek restaurant, in a very old and lovely house in Malta’s old capital. Considering all that, the menu was really upsetting. Most of the items were not available, and the Greek items available were basically whittled down to around three. There wasn’t much to choose from. If this were Greece or Cypriot Greece, the populace would be eating in or risking death from hunger.
We went for what is, by these kinds of standards, an expensive bottle of Aglianico. At €25, it was probably their costliest item. Yet they didn’t have a decent glass to drink it out of and we had to make do with the cheap version on the table. ‘Look at the cutlery!’ the GBF said, pointing out to one very clear engraving: ‘IKEA’. Ah, the possibilities that far-flung travels offer know no bounds.
We started with some lemon and coconut dhal. Is dhal Greek? I don’t know. Is the Pope Italian? It tasted really lovely, fresh and spicy and was so hot that the poor GBF got a blister in the roof of his mouth after the first mouthful.
Frankly the poor waitress really had no idea. But she was calm, mature and nice and we did not mind her. The chairs, on the other hand, were back-breaking. At this point, the anthropologist was popping up and down between house and restaurant. It all felt a little odd, like we had invaded his territory. His partner or restaurant manager also made an appearance. She seemed like a very organised and lovely person.
We shared a souvlaki: grilled, skewered kebabs, which here came emblazoned with a good dusting of lovely turmeric and accompanied with tasteless salad and a mound of packet chips. Hold on! What was that? Yes, you read right: a fabulous Greek dish of French fries.
Then there was the slow-roasted lamb which, again, had the adequate amount of spices and herbs added to it. Sadly, it was a huge New Zealand exemplar, full of slicks of fat, and we left most of it there. On the other hand, we did eat all of the French fries.
At this point, the kind professor took an interest in us, his only customers. He stopped for a chat. We asked if some kind of ‘Greek liqueur’ existed and he gave us a five minute, very interesting, lecture about how the Greeks like their sugar in solid, not liquid form. He also said that the closest one would get is a Commandaria from Cyprus (of which I have a full cupboard, following our jaunt last year). Then he launched into a story about his walnut tree and how his neighbours at the house in Cyprus did not take up his offer to make walnut liqueur when his wife/manager dragged him away. It was all very endearing.
‘Isn’t baklava Turkish?’ GBF asked when our desserts arrived. ‘Shhh…it’s a huge bone of contention between the Greeks and the Turks,’ I told him, whispering, as if they could hear us. ‘They have already had wars about lesser things…’ This one was wonderful, the pastry light and crisp, the dates and nuts inside crunchy and mealy, but why oh why did it come with a huge wave of artificial cream pressed out of a can next to it? ‘Oop La,’ GBF exclaimed.
The other Greek sweet was a large walnut encased in pastry, fried, and swimming in coffee syrup. For some reason, it was a bit too much and we didn’t eat it all. It was also very heavy. That’s not to say it was ‘bad’. It wasn’t.
I find the whole idea of Gattopardo extremely jolly but I certainly would not recommend it to anybody for food, even if when it finally does come up with a few dishes, they turn out to be not that bad.
Maybe the anthropologist should start giving regular lectures there; I’m sure people would turn up, excitedly waiting to hear what he has to say. The chances of them being the same fans as those of Joseph Violins are slim, by any means.

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