Simple beginnings

Ed eats

Cafe Goldie
Testaferrata Street,
Gżira
Tel: 2132 0931

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

Another year begins, and with it the prospect of over a thousand meals. My resolution is to make sure I don’t miss any of them. A long time ago, back when I wrote one of the first columns ever to fill this page, I vowed I would never mention anything related to weight gain or any of the other perceived downsides to eating.

Most of the menu was hearty, healthy food that is for the most part simple and approachable

Well, that was about 10 kilos ago and I’m quite pleased with myself. My girth is a trophy, a tribute to our nation’s kitchens, a milligram for every word written, or possibly a device to help keep me warm in winter.

Had I been writing about fitness regimes I’d be expected to have abs like a stainless steel washboard. I, on the other hand, consider my belly as a shiny gold coin inside the treasure chest of credibility. And why would one actively try to lose a gold coin?

I missed last week’s column because I was too busy travelling, eating, drinking and making merry. I visited some of my favourite haunts, and in general enjoyed meals without the overshadowing analysis that accompanies a meal I know I’ll be writing about.

Such is the force of this habit that when I walk into a restaurant without my camera, I feel like I’ve forgotten my underwear.

Having a few days away from the office also meant I got to enjoy having proper lunches during the week. A proper lunch is as much about food as it is about having the time to enjoy it without the menacing ticking of the clock as a soundtrack.

I’d driven past Café Goldie a couple of times, mostly during weekends. The brightly coloured wooden chairs and interesting décor taunted me from behind the glass pane of this café that seemed to be closed whenever I felt like paying a visit. Driving by on a weekday I decided I had to give this place a shot.

Three of us were meeting for lunch, and giving directions is very easy, especially with the cafe having an opening on Testaferrata Street and another one on the little road that runs parallel to it. Parking was easy, too.

We took an immediate liking to the place. The chairs are painted in as many colours as there were in the swatch book. That’s one possible cure for indecision. “What colour should we paint the chairs?” someone asked. “All of them,” said the designer.

Mirrors on the walls have wonderfully ornate frames, and a menu board has the day’s fare neatly handwritten onto it. Most of the décor is about a tastefully chic mismatch that, had it not been for some spectacular oversights, could easily earn this cafe the cover shot on a style magazine.

One such oversight is a fridge, evidently designed to hold bottles of a major drinks brand, and that now hosted huge tubs of mayonnaise. This stood out like a sore thumb and would have been better suited out of sight. Art on the walls, gallery style, is another neat touch that adds colour and character. But someone needs to line them up neatly and straighten every frame with a spirit level.

I was certain that the menu would follow suit. It did. Most of the menu is inkeeping with what one would expect of this kind of décor – hearty, healthy food that is for the most part simple and approachable. Then there was the bizarre addition of pasta with cream and Maltese sausage.

The girl at the counter was polite enough. I imagined that the place would be run by someone wonderfully eccentric, a character out of a Roald Dahl coffee shop, a personality on legs, possibly with a hint of an accent that is hard to place, and very big hair. We were treated to none of this. I chided my imagination for raising my expectations, and placed orders at the counter.

We all wanted to start with the pea soup, mainly because it was served with fresh bagels. I was having the cannelloni; the healthy one picked the Caesar salad and the reckless one opted for the pasta with cream and Maltese sausage.

When the soup was served it was quite evident to us that we had over-ordered. The cafe has planned for normal lunch fare so every dish is a sufficiently large portion to see you through dinner. Soup is served in a large bowl, with lovely fresh bagels on the side.

The soup warmed our hearts and, had we had a soul, it would have warmed it up as well. It was very decidedly a pea soup, without too much going on that would spoil the flavour of this delicate little vegetable.

It had been creamed to a lovely consistency, and I dropped little bits of bagel into the thick liquid to add crunch and bite. We quickly realised that if we worked our way through the entire bowl plus bagel there would be no way we’d have our second course.

Very reluctantly we stopped at half the bagel and left about a third of the soup, looking at the bowls wistfully as they were whisked away.

Our second course was served quite quickly. The presentation was once again neat and tidy. I have an aversion to the word ‘homemade’ applied to food that is served in restaurants because it is totally contradictory. My cannelloni, however, tasted homemade. They were steeped in sauce, filled with lovely ricotta, and free from that unbearable salty taste that characterises the more commercial versions.

The Caesar salad isn’t exactly an improvement on the one Cesare Cardini fed to America’s glitterati but it was very generous. The chicken was abundant and tender while the Caesar dressing mostly parted ways with the salad and sulked at the bottom of the plate.

The pasta with cream and sausage was exactly as described. The cream sauce was underwhelming but the sausage was good and made up for its rather insipid vehicle to yield a pleasantly comforting dish.

All three dishes were very abundant and, even though we’d left some of our soup to make room for the main course, neither of us could finish the entire meal.

Just when we were considering a coffee, a call changed our plans and we had to settle the bill for €13 each and head back out. The price is right for the quantity of food we’d ordered and we could easily have paid half that if we’d been blessed with the common sense to order just one course.

The conveniently located cafe is quaint and quite uniquely so. It is a couple of minor adjustments away from being the prettiest cafe for miles around and, with the variety of lunch options available, will be on my list of places to visit whenever I’m in the area. I’m already looking forward to those bagels.

You can send e-mails about this column to ed.eatson@gmail.com or follow @edeats on Twitter.