Salt
Pioneer Road,
Buġibba

Food: 7.5/10
Service: 6/10
Ambience: 9/10
Value: 8/10
Overall: 7.5/10

There is a restaurant for every occasion. 

Business lunches tend to take place in upscale cafeterias or restaurants that are a lovely middle ground between a formal and casual setting. Candle-lit high-end restaurants play host to hundreds of romantic dates and intimate special occasions. 

Good old fashioned trattorias on the other hand always bear the brunt of the larger groups. Service tends to be a little easier and a bit more casual allowing for “lower expectations” if you will. This is not to say that trattorias are inferior in any sense. As someone who spent years working on the floor of a number of very busy casual diners, I can tell you that those people are the unsung heroes of any establishment. 

Whenever I sit in a restaurant and see a table of 12 or larger, my heart always sinks a little. Stress levels are higher, service slows elsewhere to focus on the party and things can get a little loud and boisterous. 

It is for this reason that when my partner and I had a spot of good fortune come in, we decided to seek out an aforementioned intimate setting to celebrate. These days, the options are abundant and the search was becoming quite overwhelming before we settled on a place that looked like it fit the bill.

Salt is located in Buġibba which makes for an excellent drive on a cool summer night. Parking is also fairly available which is a blessing these days. The doors were opened for us upon entry and we instantly felt pampered as we were seen to our table. The decor is stunning. The large open plan dining room is expertly designed and the tables are spaced out perfectly to allow every diner the privacy desired and the waiters space to manoeuvre. 

The place seemed relatively quiet with about 12 other covers taking up a few of the other tables. We were handed the menus with our drinks orders taken in excellent time. The menu presented us with a myriad of options that made it a genuinely difficult task of an almost herculean nature to make up our minds.

With our minds finally made up, we placed our order and eagerly awaited the promising evening ahead. 

Considering the name of the restaurant, the irony was not wasted on us

After a few minutes, we were brought a couple of small dishes of olives and sundried tomatoes. This surprised me. Salt gives off an ‘amuse-bouche’ kind of vibe and the nibbles placed in front of us felt very out of place. They were nothing to write home about in fact and seemed like a lacklustre after thought. 

Our starters made their way to our table in very good time. And my oh my, they were something else. The duo of sausages were plump and fragrant. The casing made a delightful popping sound when bitten into and the meat inside was juicy and packed with flavour. While the pork sausage was a delight to eat, especially with the sweet caramelised onions, it would be remiss of me not to give special mention to the lamb and mint sausage. 

My partner questioned whether the mint flavour came from a jar of mint sauce as it had a familiar quality to it but I quickly shut down the train of thought. Because it didn’t matter. When something is that delicious, it could be held together with Band-Aids and glue. I could eat that all day, every day.

We were also treated to a plate of home-made mezze maniche pasta with a wild boar ragu. Again, this dish was firing on all pistons. The ragu was melt in the mouth, the nutty parmesan a perfect match and the pasta couldn’t have been cooked better. We did the dishwashers a favour and cleaned the plates. 

With the starters done and dusted, excitement started to brew for the mains. Excitement which was slowly strangled as we noticed a large number of plates heading upstairs. A large group. The very thing I dreaded. 

It was, in fact, just as I had expected it to be. The staff were all focussed on getting the group served and it took a while for us to flag a waiter down for another round of drinks. Even worse was the extremely long wait for the mains to appear. It was easily about an hour later before they made an appearance. And this is where things took a turn. 

The ribeye steak was disappointingly unseasoned. And considering the name of the restaurant, the irony was not wasted on us. I hate to sound like a broken record, but lack of basic seasoning is an unforgivable sin in my books. Salt and pepper is all I’m talking about. Especially when there is little else to hide behind, like on a plain steak. The saving grace was the fact that it was cooked perfectly to our liking and the bearnaise sauce that accompanied it was textbook. 

My duck dish, however, was an extreme letdown. The portion was very generous. I never thought I would say this, but it was far far too big. Six chunks of breast adorned the huge plate it was brought on. Each bit of seared breast sitting on top of a roulade of even more duck. It felt like a praesente cadavere funeral for the entire bird. The stuffed leg was dry and the texture was a bit grainy. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

The breast tasted overwhelmingly like liver. With each and every bite, the flavour or iron started to coat my mouth and made for an exceptionally unpleasant experience. This is not unheard of, but occurs when the protein is not washed and prepared properly. The amount of blood that remains within the meat will lend the wrong flavour profile to it and quite frankly, ruin the entire dish. Considering the starters were heavenly, the mains were a massive let-down and a sore point for me.

Again, it took a while for the servers to clear our table and provide us with a dessert menu. I was still hungry, having left most of my main on the plate. We instantly spotted the two fondant options on the menu and buckled up for the forewarned 15 minute wait. 

This time, the timing was spot on and steaming hot fondants were placed in front of our eyes. The dark chocolate cake was decadent and everything a dessert like this should be. The pistachio ice-cream complemented it perfectly and the playful mixture of hot and cold and sweet and bitter was a dream.

The white chocolate fondant was just as good but tasted very much like lemon. A wonderful and classic flavour combination that worked perfectly, but was not advertised on the menu. My partner, who was looking forward to a more chocolate forward flavour, was put off by this. Luckily, I have no such bugbears and happily sacrificed the dark chocolate fondant for its more fruity counterpart.

I would like to return to Salt and see if it was an off night, but overall I would not say it was an unpleasant one. As we were leaving and bid goodnight to the staff, we realised that they had rushed to open the door on our way in, but not on our way out. Not a factor that matters in any sense to me, but it topped off an evening of inconsistencies that we noted throughout the food and service. But I’ll take that with a pinch of salt.