Two elderly sisters behind Victoria’s Coney Island Bar thought they would “be born and die” there. But the pastizzi and te fit-tazza joint is closing this month after almost 100 years, and they will have to reinvent their lifetime routine.

For more than six decades, Maria Debrincat, 80, and her younger sister Georgia, 76, have run the central Gozo bar, welcoming without fail the piping-hot pastizzi trays at 6.15am every morning – and the office workers, who followed the breakfast trail.

That chapter is set to end by the close of the year, when the sisters will return the keys of the bar that has been in the family’s hands since 1931.

Priced out – rent shot up from almost €100 a year to €16,000 – they harbour no rancour and their feelings of nostalgia are seasoned with a reasoned understanding of their landlord's situation and a good dose of humour.

“What can you do?”, the sisters shrug, acknowledging that the last two years, during which they have been preparing for this moment, have been rent-free.

They recall their father paying some Lm6 (€14) back in the day. “But what is his is his,” they say about the owner.

The Debrincats were advised not to enter lengthy legal battles – “which we would have lost anyway” – to remain in operation until 2028.

“It is not worth it. Whoever is in charge makes the laws,” they accept.

The prime property just off Pjazza l-Indipendenza – one of the larger along the main road, according to the sisters – was once a silent-movie cinema. It was eventually taken over by their father, Joseph, whose plaque paves the entrance to the bar. But he was constantly travelling to the US, where he worked for Ford, and the name Coney Island comes from his trips there.

Back then, it was a ‘proper’ bar, which never shut at night, and served more than just a cup of tea in a glass. During Carnival, their father would bring in a musician and there would be dancing for three days as the party continued indoors.

Now, a couple of dusty whiskey bottles still hang upside down behind the counter, mostly empty, or waiting to serve their last drops.

“It was our mother and her sisters who used to run the bar then,” they recount. “We remember going over to eat there with our grandmother in the school lunchbreak.”

By day, they also recall, it was the place where accounts were closed, and payments made to employees like a sort of communal office.

Sisters, elder brother took over 60 years ago

The sisters took over the bar, together with an elder brother, and have been at it for the last 60 years.

With time, they started closing at noon, when they would stop to have their lunch, slow-cooking it on the stove in the backrooms. Brodu (broth) is on the menu today.

Bare, aluminum and formica-clad, Coney Island Bar is still full of character, undergoing minimal changes over time.

Now, the sisters have no idea what plans are in store for it. But they know they could never afford to pay the revised rent and yearly increments, describing their work there as more of a hobby.

They were hardly making a living from the mostly break-time snack for government workers, tourists and Maltese, their strongest clientele of late.

“Some of them we knew as children coming with their parents; now they remind us, as they show up with their own.”

Sisters Maria and Georgia Debrincat are shutting the doors of Coney Island bar, which has been a fixture in Gozo for almost 100 years, as the rent shoots up. Photo: Karl Andrew Micallef

Busiest times were Santa Marija,  San Ġorġ 

Coney Island’s busiest times were during the feasts of Santa Marija and San Ġorġ in summer, when they could sell up to 20 trays of pastizzi – about 800 – a day.

Admitting they may soon feel like “fish out of water”, life will probably swing between chores and church, the sisters say, resigned to spend more time at home up the road in Rabat.

“I will now be playing the piano and Georgia the violin,” Maria laughs. “You’ll find me in Paris,” Georgia winks from behind the counter.

But rather than putting up any concerts, the Debrincat sisters are more likely to be arguing, mostly over what to eat. They do not even agree on their breakfast choices, with Georgia on a delectable pea cakes diet – “my sin” – every single morning of her life and her sister opting for toast.

Until December 13, the Debrincats will sit at their table in the left-hand corner of the bar, once occupied by their mother around a century ago.

It has always been their place, and so far, they have only left it to shuffle to the metal storage box in the doorway, with a tiny glass saucer, barely balancing one pastizz, and a small napkin square in hand to serve their final customers with a smile.