This is the final article in a two-part series. Read part one.

A third restaurant advertised itself through promotion cards – the National Buffet & Restaurant, owned by Charles Muscat – very likely a third Carmelo, as by this time many Carmelos were anglicising their names to Charles.

The back of the National Restaurant card used as a bill.

The restaurant occupied Nos 252, 253, Republic Street, Valletta. Its business card, neatly laid out in red and blue vaguely art nouveau graphics, comes from the Catania printers S. di Mattei & Co. The back has the original bill of a meal for three consumed on March 5, 1906. The total added up to a staggering six shillings, five pence, slightly less than €1 each, I believe. It included two servings of pork chops, one pudding, two pastries for each customer, butter, tea and coffee. Diners would not have felt ripped off.

The Great Britain Hotel at about the same time issued a whole set of advertising postcards which include a couple showing the dining room. The hotel, in No. 67, South Street, Valletta, promoted itself as “the only hotel in Malta under English management” and, to be consistent, it had its cards printed in Great Britain. The long advertorial it published in Allister Macmillan’s Malta and Gibraltar in 1915 informs readers that the hotel started about 40 years earlier “by Mr C. Lawrence who died in 1892 and has since been conducted by Mr F.C. Lawrence who spares no pains to satisfy his guests”, adding, on the downside “it is particularly popular with Army and Navy people”. 

The hotel’s most distinguished patron had probably been author D.H. Lawrence who stayed there in 1920 and wrote about it. He praised the Osborne Hotel cuisine, right across the road, but said nothing about the food served by the only English restaurant in Malta. Lawrence had at first fallen in love with Malta but that passion quickly soured. He recorded his relief in “leaving that bone-dry, hideous island”. 

The Great Britain Hotel’s most distinguished patron had probably been author D.H. Lawrence

Macmillan mentions other hotels with dining facilities, like the Royal, (30, Merchants Street), the St James (226, St Paul’s Street), the Westminster (11, Republic Street) and the Osborne (50, South Street), all in Valletta, and the Savoy (6, Imrabat Street, Sliema); it is not known that any of these published advertising cards mentioning their dinner facilities. The Modern Imperial Hotel, in Sliema had a promotion card for its restaurant but I do not own a copy.

Another postcard advertising the Great Britain Hotel dining room.

Sliema, then picking up as a favourite residence for British servicemen and those Maltese who felt fulfilled by being in their shadow, also had its early hotels with diners and its stand-alone eating venues. In the very early 1930s, or perhaps before, Meadowbank House, of No. 164, Tower Road, published a number of promotional postcards, showing its striking art nouveau façade and its other amenities, including its restaurant open to the public. The Meadowbank, owned by the Vella family, survived well into the 1970s, only to fall victim to the relentless and unpardoning uglification of Tower Road.

St Julian’s had a restaurant which also used cards for promotion – the Seaville of Spinola Road, il-Qaliet, telephone number Sliema 542. The card stresses that the owner, Joseph Fenech, organised dinner dances on Saturdays and Sundays. The dining area looks spacious enough but I have not traced its exact location nor have I come came across any oldie who could enrich my knowledge of this establishment.

Most of these cards were in English. N. Consoli, in the 1930s, advertised his Pensione Italia, No. 44, South Street, Valletta, in Italian. Referring to Malta as ‘Fior del Mondo’, he highlighted the “excellent Italian cuisine” served in his dining room.

The Café de la Reine probably got its name for sprawling under the shadow of Queen Victoria’s monument in Valletta. It later changed its name to Café Premier. Under both designations, for most of the 20th century, it represented the hub of social and cultural life in the capital. It became the communal sitting room in Valletta, where everyone met everyone else to light music every evening. Though never renowned for its cuisine, it did serve lunches and dinners. I recall the notices in English-with-optimism: ‘Granite served in glasses’ and the waiters whispering conspiratorially, half-Maltese, half-English, ‘Today we have salmon mutton pies” (mutton pies tas-salamun).

The Qawra costal tower of the Order has served as a catering establishment, under different names, since the 1930s and Dick Palmer, who first ran it, seems to have been quite proud of his eatery. His promotional postcard shows him standing proudly with his family in front of his beflagged mini fort (Fig. 14). Today,  some 80 years later, it goes by the name of Fra Ben.

A promotion card of the National Buffet & Restaurant in Valletta, 1906.

The final card, just pre-World War II, advertised the Guest House at No. 7, Holy Cross Street, Mdina, telephone number Rabat 169, today the Medina Restaurant. It was better known for its English teas and snacks but the ‘English management’ also hosted dinner and supper parties (what’s the difference?). At least two printings of this card exist, in different fonts but identical wording.

The picture side of the card has a quite amateurishly drawn relief map of Mdina, to lead the way to the catering establishment, all punctuated and captioned in irking faux olde Englishe and all extolling ‘ye Geste Hovse where maye be hadde Englishe vittles for moderate recompense’. The map warns the customer where there is a ‘sharpe korner to sound ye horne’ and how to leave Mdina there is only ‘ye one-waye oute’. Guaranteed to send me rushing to any eatery the other side of the city.

Tourism, and fine restaurants, only really started with independence in 1964. Before that, Dodo Lees, Dom Mintoff’s handpicked tourism czarina, could still write that she purposely omitted food in her tourist promotion “because it wasn’t frightfully good”. She also gave a reason for this failing. “All the English servicemen and their wives said ‘We don’t want foreign muck’ so the few restaurants there gave them what they wanted – steak and chips”. After the 1960s, Malta witnessed an explosion of restaurant advertising postcards.

A postcard of the Meadowbank House, Sliema, showing restaurant facilities.

A postcard promoting the Seaville Restaurant in Spinola Road, St Julian’s.