Ed eats

Elia
73, Merchants Street,
Valletta
Tel: 2768 9525

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

It seems like my plea for a wider selection of international cuisine is being heard.

A few weeks ago, I was thrilled to discover a Swedish restaurant, and what a lovely evening that was. I did manage to get their address wrong, so if you decide to hunt for the place, it is in Dragonara Road in Paceville. Apologies if I sent anyone on a wild goose chase; although wild goose can taste pretty decent in the right hands.

Then I heard that there was a Greek restaurant somewhere in Valletta. I’d been missing Bouzouki and wondering when a source of Greek delights would turn up. I’ve been to Greece quite a few times. As a kid, we used to embark on epic sailing trips to the Ionian islands and we ate our way across them, developing an early liking for their cuisine that somehow tasted like it belonged a little further East.

Stuffed vine leaves, for instance, are available in different guises all along the Mediterranean as you travel east and even south into North Africa. They’re called a number of variants on the word Dolmas, a word of Turkish origin.

At every opportunity we’d eat lamb chops. I have no idea why we developed such a liking for them but I do recall that we always enjoyed them, whatever island we happened to be on. Somehow, no one on those islands had found a way to mess them up.

Later on I travelled to mainland Greece and to Cyprus, eating all the time as I do, like a human caterpillar to whom the whole world is but a tasty leaf.

Variants of foods I’d come to regard as typical became apparent, and I was pleased to see such variety being defended with fierce pride. This is a good thing, since such intense pride is usually just a few metres away from a delicious dish.

The possibility of sampling more of what I love in Valletta sounded very appealing. Off I went at my first opportunity and played the usual Russian Roulette with parking there. I was pleased to walk past a very active St George’s Square and to see restaurants on the way to Merchants Street serving food to healthy numbers of patrons. Valletta deserves to be alive at night and I appreciate every sign of this becoming a reality.

Elia has tables outside the small restaurant, enjoying a lovely spot in the pedestrian area of Merchants Street. There is also a sign that states that there is more seating upstairs. This will make sense in winter, if that ever happens, but I didn’t go and explore, so I can’t report about the upstairs dining area.

Dining at the tables outside is very much like a taverna, with simple furniture, cutlery for the table bundled in a couple of paper napkins, and little else by way of decoration. This frugality almost makes the place feel like an overgrown take-out, but the menus do present diners with a decent variety of typical Greek cuisine. The starters have all the usual dips, while the grill section includes my beloved lamb chops along with souvlaki in various forms and other grilled meats. More main courses cover typical Greek cuisine like stews and my perennial favourite – moussaka.

Sitting in the awkward ground between taverna and restaurant ends up having it feel like one but be priced like the other

I had, as is often the case, a struggle between my belly and my brain. The belly attempted to convince me that I should taste the entire menu in one sitting. The brain told me I should be sensible and order as much as I could reasonably consume.

I ordered the three dips I felt like, since at €2 for a small portion I figured I could assemble my own starter for €6.

I’d been thinking about taramasalata since I’d left my cave so that was most definitely on the cards. Tzatziki and melitzanosalata were the other two I’d picked, as they tie for second favourite.

Taramasalata is a dip made of cured fish roes. If you have an excellent relationship with your fishmonger, you might coerce him to prepare some for you and then make your own. You might be disappointed with the colour unless you’re prepared to add plenty of food colouring to get the bright pink it turns up in when ordered at a restaurant.

The one served at Elia tastes disappointingly like the prepared stuff you’d pick up at a supermarket and my disappointment was palpable. I felt like a football fan at the 90th minute, when your favourite team is losing the match, an emotion I could never understand until this moment.

Tzatziki is a yoghurt and cucumber dip that often serves as a vehicle for plenty of garlic. I never encountered vampires in Greece and have tzatziki to thank for this.

The one that was presented to me was quite good, with enough garlic to end the flood of teenage vampire romance that is swamping the paperback market. The final dip, an aubergine dip that depends on the aubergine being fried or roasted before preparation, was really quite lovely.

This one really made the best of the toasted Maltese bread that was served with my tiny triad of dips.

The lady who greeted us and served us all evening went a long way towards making the experience more enjoyable than I suppose it should have been. There wasn’t an empty table that night and she was handling the floor without any assistance.

She was evidently overburdened and yet made the effort to smile at every encounter, help out with any queries and deliver food and clear our table at record speed. My starter may not have needed much preparation, yet I expected a longer wait time judging by the sheer number of people this one lady had to deal with.

Our main course was also served within a reasonable time, possibly because the slow-cooked lamb and the moussaka are both dishes that should actually be prepared in advance. Serve a moussaka too fresh and the layers slide all over the place until the carefully crafted dish is disassembled.

Mine held together very well though. It tasted like Greek home cooking rather than the moussaka served commercially, with the layers very distinct, an almost imperceptible béchamel layer, and a very salty choice of seasoning to it. If you’re after the Westernised moussaka that is practically consistent in texture, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re up for some home cooking, then this is close to the real deal.

My victim that night had skipped a starter, claiming there was nothing on the menu she could eat or would eat. Let’s say that my hypothesis about skipping a course in an attempt at a flash diet did not go down as planned. She did order slow-cooked lamb though, and my participation in the not-a-flash diet included tasting a sizeable chunk of it. It was tender, had plenty of thyme and was almost unbearably salty. Even as one who loves salt, I don’t think I’d have eaten the entire portion.

The wedges of baked potato had suffered the same fate and were salty beyond redemption – so salty that the only two consumed were the ones we each tasted.

Even if I’d eaten enough by then, I was not about to leave without ordering baklava. Unfortunately, this wasn’t available that evening, so I settled for a rather uninspiring halva – a sweet made of semolina, orange syrup and topped with cinnamon.

Throughout the meal we drank a bottle of Greek table wine for the sake of it and, while nothing to write home about, it did the trick.

At almost €20, it pushed the bill for what was a glorified take-out to a rather hefty €60 for the two of us.

I love the fact that Elia actually exists and was particularly happy to be seated in that most lovely of locations (even if I had to listen to Zorba the Greek).

I would suggest that it settles on a level of service though. Sitting in the awkward ground between taverna and restaurant ends up having it feel like one but be priced like the other.

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