Kenilworth: Dining at The Cross and Gawping at the Castle

A Castle and a Restaurant Review

Kenilworth: The Where and The What

Warwickshire

Warwick District

Kenilworth (pop:22,000) is a market town in the Warwick district of Warwickshire. It is a pleasant, compact place surrounded by lush green countryside, or so it feels. But just beyond the fields to the north is the Metropolitan Borough of Coventry, and to the south are Leamington and Warwick, separate municipalities divided only by the width of the river Avon. Kenilworth is no isolated country town.

Warwickshire

Kenilworth: The Why

To the northwest, though the map does not show it, is a rural portion of the Metropolitan Borough of Solihull, the least urban, some might say the most pleasant, of the West Midlands' seven metropolitan boroughs. Lynne and I were married in Solihull’s Parish Church of St Alphege on the 26th of July 1975. So today is our 49th wedding anniversary.

Our habit of many years is to visit somewhere pleasant with a renowned restaurant and enjoy what we hope will be an outstanding dinner. This year’s chosen venue was the Michelin starred The Cross in Kenilworth. But Kenilworth is also home to a large and in some ways unusual castle, so it would be odd not to visit while it was nearby.

Kenilworth Castle

Such elegant ruins

Kenilworth Castle is a unique collection of structures, built in the local red sandstone over a period of 500 years. Here is a breathlessly brief history of its construction

In 1120 Roger de Clinton, Henry I’s chancellor, turned an existing Norman keep into a strong tower. King John added an outer wall in the early 1200s and dammed two brooks to create a mere defending two thirds the castle perimeter. In the 1300s John of Gaunt built the middle range. In the 1550s John Dudley widened the tilt yard and built the stable block. A decade later his son Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester built the massive Leicester Tower and the Italian Garden. Like most English castles Kenilworth was ‘slighted’ after the Civil War. In 1649, just before the slighting the London based Bohemian etcher and artist Wenceslaus Hollar drew a plan of the castle which is still useful.

Wenceslaus Tollar's plan of Kenilworth Castle (property of Toronto University)

Had I attempted to take the photograph below any time between 1200 and 1700, I would have been standing in the mere – and, of course, I would have no camera.

King John's Curtain Wall and the surviving main buildings, Kenilworth Castle

From the mere we made our way up to the tiltyard (24 on Hollar’s Plan). This is the top of the dam that created the mere, levelled and widened for use in jousting. At the end of the tiltyard, we entered the castle through what remains of Mortimer’s Tower (23). Inside we turned right and descended to John Dudley’s stable block (6)….

Stable block (photographed from the left, though we approached from the right)

..not because we are interested in Tudor horse accommodation, but because it is now the café. It was lunchtime and cup of tea and a cheese scone felt a appropriate. It also gave us the opportunity to marvel at the carpentry of the wooden roof.

Stableblock roof

Fed and watered we walked up across the base court (22) to look at the main buildings.

Main Buildings, Kenilworth Castle

On the right is Roger de Clinton’s tower, buildings 16 and 20 have gone, John of Gaunt’s Mid-Range (14 and 17) can be seen further back and the Leicester Tower (21) is on the left. Although the building stone remained unchanged, the architecture did not. Clinton’s Tower originally had arrow slits but no windows; windows were weaknesses, and as glass was unavailable, they also opened the interior to the elements. John of Gaunt’s 14th century buildings had glass windows like the those seen in churches of that date and signify the start of the change from castle to palace. The Leicester Tower had glass from floor to ceiling on every storey, the cost was stupendous, but Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester was a man on a mission: to marry Elizabeth I. The queen, maybe, encouraged his ambition, though she never would marry him, nor anyone else. She visited in 1566 and again in 1568; between visits he completed the tower so she could stay in surroundings as luxurious as any palace in the world. That would win her, he thought.

Clinton’s stronghold acquired some windows over the centuries…

Outside Clinton's Tower

…and the medieval hard man would have been shocked by the view from the northern side.

Looking north from Clinton's Tower

The Italian Garden was part of Robert Dudley’s campaign for the queen’s hand.

There is a better view from an unremarkable and wall-less room up a small flight of steps.

The Italian Garden from the room where Edward II abdicated

Here, on the 20th of January 1327 the serially incompetent Edward II was told to abdicate in favour of his 14-year-old son Edward III, while Edward II’s wife, Isabella of France and her lover Roger Mortimer were appointed regents. He objected, but nobody listened.

Edward II was held here for a few months, then taken to Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire where he was murdered. Three years later, Edward III overthrew his mother and Mortimer, as any stroppy teenager would. He had Mortimer executed, while Isabella (who was only 35) settled for a long and interesting retirement at Castle Rising in Norfolk (we visited in 2022).

From the Inner Court (15) we entered the kitchens (12) where modern stairs took us into a tower….

Looking down on the kitchen

…from where we could look into John of Gaunt’s Great Hall. The ground floor was for storage and servants, the hall itself was above that, but the floor has gone.

The Grand Hall was on this level but there is no floor

John of Gaunt was a younger son of Edward III (r 1327 – 1377) whose oldest son, Edward the Black Prince predeceased his father, so his son, thus became King Richard II on the death of his grandfather. Twenty-two years later John of Gaunt’s son usurped the throne and became Henry IV (r 1399-1413). His son became Henry V.

Henry V made a speculative claim on the throne of France and in reply the Dauphin sent him a chest of tennis balls, a way of saying, ‘run off and play, sonny.’ The chest was opened in this very hall. The insult led to Henry leading a major incursion into France and winning the Battle of Agincourt, though he never did become King of France. The tennis ball story features in Shakespeare’s Henry V and was taught as fact when I was young. It is now thought to be ‘fake news.’

The windows are worth looking at, the style intermediate between those eventually put in Clinton’s Tower and the windows of the Leicester Tower.

The Grand Hall windows

There is little to see in the Leicester tower but Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire, built so 30 years later shows what the Tudors could do with glass – and it’s not a ruin. We visited 2018.

We left the castle and checked into our B&B a short drive away

The Cross, New Street Kenilworth

Tradition dictates that choosing the restaurant is my job, and Lynne remains in the dark about our destination until we get there. The criteria for choosing I will keep to myself, but after a couple of years of tasting menus with so many courses we started to flag, I was looking for a restaurant offering an old fashioned three course meal. The Cross does that - and offers a six-course tasting menu for those younger and stronger than us.

Kenilworth is also only an hour’s drive from home, and there was a suitable B&B a conveniently short walk from the restaurant. That walk took us from the High Street, where there are several restaurants, into the less promising New Street.

Walking to The Cross

Andreas Antona opened Simpson’s in Edgbaston in 1993. Four years later it became Birmingham’s first Michelin starred restaurant. In 2013 he asked Simpson’s head chef Adam Bennett to become chef-director of The Cross, his new venture. A year or so later The Cross won a Michelin star and has maintained it ever since.

According to their website The Cross is housed in a Grade II listed 19th-century inn. It also says the main dining room is a former school room and the bar was previously a butcher's shop. Whether the inn came before the schoolroom/butcher’s or after is not vouchsafed.

Aperitif and Canapés

We did not bother with the bar, the evening was still warm so we enjoyed our drink and nibbles outside.

From the extensive gin list, we chose Kenilworth Heritage gin, because it is local and we had seen it on sale (for a hefty price) in the castle gift shop. Despite it being a) artisan and b) expensive, neither of us liked it very much.

What an enormous G & T!

The canapés were a treat for the eyes…

Canapés, The Cross, Kenilworth

…but good looks are not everything.

Despite its tiny nasturtium leaf, a mini-croque monsieur is just a cheese and ham toastie. Although nicely made and beautifully presented the ingredients were uninspiring.

The beetroot in the spoon is an example of the chef-y technique of spherification. The idea is that the largish bubble of liquid beetroot should burst in the mouth with satisfying consequences. Lynne liked it, I liked the idea but would have preferred almost any other fruit of vegetable. Lynne was also delighted by the tiny contrivance on top, a herb with something to crunch. She thought it was bursting with flavour, I was unconvinced.

The filo basket of tiny chopped potato topped by goat curd was a pleasing little mouthful.

Lynne’s Starter

Broth of Devon White Chicken, roast winglet, new seasons onions, broad beans, tarragon.

A large soup bowl arrived, empty but for a small hill if vegetables covering the winglets (what part of a chicken is that?). The broth came in a separate jug and the waiter poured it round and eventually over the vegetables.

Broth of Devon white chicken, The Cross, Kenilworth

More than a touch of theatre is required to turn soup of the day (chicken and vegetable) into a Michelin starred dish, but it helps. The deep, rich intensity of the broth did the rest, and the tarragon worked its usual magic with the chicken.

My Starter

Tartar of Beef, soy pickled mushrooms, radish salad, yeast crumb and mushroom ketchup.

Inside every man hides a blood smeared hunter. Such an atavistic monster even lurks behind my kindly elderly gent façade so I need to be thrown a slab of raw meat every now and then.

In this case though, the raw meat was not a slab, and instead of being thrown it was elegantly presented, hiding beneath a radish salad. There was little added to the finely chopped fillet steak, a little seasoning and something, I know not what, that bound it nicely together.

Beef tartar, The Cross, Kenilworth

In his ‘French Odyssey’ Rick Stein wrote I noticed in France that steak tartare has become fashionable once more, so I hope it catches on again here in Britain. I suppose the idea of raw meat is a bit hard to take for some people, but it’s always struck me as completely lovely. Hear, hear. I loved the steak, I loved the tiny pickled mushrooms and the blobs of mushroom ketchup, I even loved the radish - and the yeast crumb provided a different crunch to make the dish complete.

Bread

Around this point in all restaurants of this ilk, some bread appears, baked on-site or by a local artisan baker, accompanied by a special butter. I am not sure why I am expected to want bread and butter at this stage of a meal. I had a piece to see if it was good, and it was truly excellent, but I could eat no more.

Bread and butter, The Cross, Kenilworth

Wine

Beef tartar demanded red, so I ordered a glass of Rioja. The rest of our meal wanted white and choosing a bottle from the long (and sometimes expensive) list required thoughtful browsing. Among the often-underrated wines of Portugal I spotted a Bucelas. When Portugal was too poor to care much about quality wines, Bucelas, near Lisbon was one the few designated quality areas. It was popular in Victorian England but more recently, many of its vineyards disappeared under Lisbon’s urban sprawl. Lower production makes it hard to find, even in Portugal, but it remains good and I was delighted to see a bottle at an affordable price.

Main Course

Cornish John Dory, baby gem lettuce, peas, girolle mushrooms and bacon, parsley, new potatoes, chicken jus with lemon thyme.

We both chose the John Dory which, like every dish at The Cross was beautifully presented.

John Dory, and more. The Cross, Kenilworth

John Dory is coastal fish that can be found around every continent except the Americas and Antarctica. It is not landed in any great quantity being a by-catch of other fisheries. Many of those that are caught find their way to the upper end of the restaurant business. Its flesh is very white, surprisingly flaky for a small fish and very tasty.

It was surrounded by the sort of peas that remind you how much better fresh peas are than frozen, bacon that was crisped and almost sweet, and girolles with a remarkably powerful flavour that pleased me but not Lynne. All was moistened by a chicken jus and everything came together better than I had thought possible. It was a delightful dish, but the John Dory, announced as the star, just became part of an ensemble. Does that matter? Probably not.

Lynne’s Dessert

Hazelnut soufflé, praline sauce, Chantilly cream,

Who does not like a good soufflé? The praline sauce was poured into a hole dug into the top and the Chantilly cream came in a separate bowl - which Lynne perversely ignored.

Hazelnut soufflé and praline sauce

Impressed by the nuttiness, Lynne was more than happy with her soufflé. I ate the world’s finest souffle at Hambleton Hall in 2021, so I feel there is no point me trying another - what if I was proved wrong? I must look after my ego. Fortunately, after only two courses and a very little bread I felt strong enough to tackle the cheeseboard

Cheese

As has now become almost universal, all the cheeses were English artisan products. From left to right they are: Tunworth, Double Barrel Poacher, Ashcombe, Brightwell Ash and Shropshire Blue.

Cheeseboard

I am familiar with Tunworth, a Hampshire version of Camembert. It is excellent when eaten ripe, and this example was fully ripe with well-developed flavours of mushrooms and cowshed.

I am also familiar with Lincolnshire Poacher made by Simon Jones at his dairy farm in the Lincolnshire Wolds. His recipe owes something to both Farmhouse Cheddar and Comté.  The regular Poacher is matured for 14 to 16 months, the Double Barrel gets 2 to 3 years. Powerful stuff.

Kindly elderly gent eats cheese

Ashcombe is a Cotswold version of Morbier, with is distinctive band of ash. This excited me less.

As did the Brightwell Ash. Made in Berkshire, it is a soft, ash coated goat’s cheese. I have a prejudice against cheese that is spreadable, and I would have liked a goatier flavour.

Despite its name, Shropshire Blue is made by several producers in Nottinghamshire. Some of those producers also make Stilton, which I wish this was.

All cheeseboards are a compromise, so a partial success is as good as it gets, but I was a little disappointed by this selection – a kindly elderly gent can become a grumpy old git and be difficult to please, sorry.

Petits Fours etc

That leaves just coffee and petits fours…

Petits Fours

…and a recognition of the occasion.

Thank you to the Cross

And Finally

We enjoyed our evening, indeed our whole day. The meal was excellent, the flavours, the combinations and the presentation were all well thought through and executed. There were no meaningful low points, but neither were there moments that took the breath away, no horseradish ice-cream, no scallop, wasabi and apple granita. We would have liked such a moment, but maybe that is being greedy.

'Fine Dining' posts

Abergavenny and the Walnut Tree (2010)
Ludlow and La Bécasse (2011) (restaurant closed, post withdrawn)
Ilkley and The Box Tree(2012)
Pateley Bridge and the Yorke Arms (2013) (No longer a restaurant, post renamed Parceval Gardens and Pateley Br)
The Harrow at Little Bedwyn (2014)
The Slaughters and the Lords of the Manor (2015)
Loam, Fine Dining in Galway (2016)
Penarth and Restaurant James Sommerin (2017) (restaurant closed, post withdrawn. JS has a new restaurant in Penarth)
The Checkers, Montgomery (2017) (no longer a restaurant, post withdrawn. Now re-opened under new management)
Tyddyn Llan, Llandrillo, Denbighshire (2018)
Fischer's at Baslow Hall, Derbyshire (2019)
Hambleton Hall, Rutland (2021)
The Olive Tree, Queensberry Hotel, Bath (2022)
Dinner at Pensons near Tenbury Wells (2023) (restaurant closed Dec 2023, post withdrawn)
The Cross, Kenilworth (& Kenilworth Castle) 2024

Eating Aldeburgh

Finding Good Food on the Suffolk Coast

Introduction

Suffolk

Aldeburgh

This post differs from the similarly named posts for Malta, Madeira and elsewhere. There we read dozens of menus to see what local people ate, or at least the version of it restaurateurs wish to present to visitors, and then set about eating it

We did our research for those posts in Valletta and Funchal, both orders of magnitude larger than the small Suffolk coastal town of Aldeburgh (pop: just over 2,000). We did read the menus of Aldeburgh’s small clutch of restaurants and although they presented a cross-section of modern British restaurants – far better and more diverse than they were thirty or forty years ago – there was little uniquely Suffolk about them, so we had to look elsewhere.

Suffolk with Aldeburgh (underlined) and the position of Suffolk in England (inset)

The people of Aldeburgh and their visitors obviously care about good food. They have, I am delighted to report, no McDonald's, Burger King, KCF, Domino’s or Starbucks, but instead there is an artisan butcher’s, a bakery or two, a specialist cheesemonger and several independent coffee shops (plus the inevitable supermarket). They also have one local speciality which marks out the town - the fish shacks.

The Fish Shacks

Aldeburgh’s pebble beach is not much use to the bucket and spade brigade, but is good for landing the catch from small fishing boats. Much of that catch finds its way to the line of sheds along the top of the beach

Fish shacks, Aldeburgh

These are not officially called the ‘fish shacks,’ but the name seems appropriate. From this angle they look rather down-at-heal, but that is misleading. Aldeburgh is an affluent little town and these sheds deal in the finest and freshest fish available – and charge accordingly.

Smoked Fish

A couple of them specialise in smoked fish, and this was there we headed on our first morning.

Smoked fish shack

We bought some smoked haddock paté. Which made a pleasant lunch…

Smoked haddock paté, toast and a salad

…and some hot-smoked eel. Hot-smoking is carried out between 74° and 85°C. The fish cooks during the process, resulting in stronger smoky flavour and a firm, moist texture. Cold-smoking is done between 20° and 30° and the fish requires curing with salt afterwards.

The eel looked like a length sawn from a policeman’s truncheon, but the advice given was to cut it in rounds between the vertebrae and removed the leathery skin with a sharp knife. This worked and we gently warmed the resulting discs and served them with buttered boiled potatoes and the last spears of the English asparagus season. And very good it was, too.

Smoked eel, boiled potatoes and asparagus

Fresh Fish

On our final day, we returned to the shacks, browsing for a fish.

An Aldeburgh fish shack

At a shack – not the one photographed – we spied a Dover sole. Big enough to feed two, it was eye-wateringly expensive, because Dover sole is, but we could not resist it.

It was a whole fish, so Lynne decided she needed some advice about preparation. The internet was, as ever, full of suggestions, but it would be a remarkable holiday cottage which supplied the sort of knives needed to fillet the fish raw.

Fortunately, Rick Stein had a practical solution. First, remove the skin. A nick near the tail starts the process…

A nick by the tale starts the process

…and each side comes off in one piece, just as Rick promised. This allows you to deal with the guts which largely sit just behind the head.

Pealing off the skin

Then dust with flour and pan-fry it whole - if your pan is big enough. Even after removing the head, a cut across the fish was necessary to make it fit our pan. Fillet after cooking…

Filleting the cooked sole

…then serve with crushed new potatoes and locally picked samphire.

Dover sole with crushed new potatoes and samphire

Thank you, Lynne (and Rick).

Restaurant Fish

Take Away

Our attempt to eat out on Wednesday ended in failure. We had not booked, every table in the restaurant was occupied and we were turned away with apologies. Time for Plan B.

I earlier listed the fast-food abominations Aldeburgh does not have, and nowhere did I mention a chip shop. I give fish and chips a pass because they are deeply embedded in British food culture, and because they are almost all independent, there are no vast chains of franchised identikit fish and chip shops.

That said, I cannot remember the last time I was in a chippy, but it was years, maybe decades ago. Aldeburgh has two, both under the same management, and one, the Golden Galleon, was 50m from our front door.

The Golden Galleon, Aldeburgh. Our home for the week was up the alley to the left of the chippy

Inside it was bright, clean and did not smell of stale frying. Although there were, as always, other accompaniments we ordered cod and mushy peas with the inevitable chips, took them home and ate them from the chip papers.

Lynne with her fish and chips

The batter was crisp, light and golden, the fish huge and flaky and the chips fresh and not even slightly soggy – and that is as good as it gets.

Eating In

We returned to our original choice of restaurant two days later, this time with a reservation.

Lynne was disappointed that the red mullet was finished, but instead chose the Catch of the Day, a pleasing plump, fresh plaice that arrived, lurking beneath a bed of capers. She was pleased with her alternative choice.

A nice piece of plaice

Lobster Thermidor is a somewhat dated symbol of luxurious, even extravagant dining.

Thermidor (19 July to 17 August) was the ‘Heat month’ of the French Revolutionary Calendar. Despite their richly descriptive names – Brumaire (Fog month 22 Oct to 20 Nov), Floréal (Flower month, 20 April – 19 May) – the Calendar did not catch on and was abandoned by Napoleon in 1805.

Created in Paris in the 1890s, Lobster Thermidor involved freshly boiled lobster being taken from its shell, shredded and incorporated into a sauce based on onions, mustard, wine, brandy and cream. It is then replaced in the shell, covered with grated Gruyère and popped under a grill until the cheese has melted.

There was no Lobster Thermidor on the menu, but this coast is best known for its crabs, so they had a Crab Thermidor. Maybe it was a bit tongue-in-cheek, and I ordered it with a sense of irony, but it was excellent. Lynne objects to ‘fish that has been messed about’ and although I am less purist, I expected the rich, complex sauce and the cheese to drown out the delicate flavour of crab, but not so, instead they worked together. It was nicely presented, though the salad dressing had a sweetness I could have done without.

Crab thermidor

Having skipped the starter, I was pleased to find I could manage a dessert. I chose the vanilla pannacotta, with rhubarb poached in vodka and shortbread crumb.

Vanilla pannacotta

The pannacotta wobbled nicely, though it may have been too wobbly, but that is erring on the right side. It also tasted of vanilla - I am always pleased when ‘vanilla’ really means ‘vanilla’ and is not being used as a synonym for ‘plain.’ I am unsure why vodka was involved; it hardly added to the flavour. The shortbread crumb provided a pleasing extra texture

An East Anglian Lunch

Not everything is about fish. We ate a lunch using ingredients culled from the specialist local shops where every item was, if not from Suffolk, at least from East Anglia – except the butter, which was sold as being just ‘British.’

An East Anglian lunch

The sourdough bread is from the bakery round the corner.

The tomatoes were supermarket bought in Staffordshire, but were (coincidently) grown in Cambridgeshire.

The cheese top left on the board is Wensum White, an artisan goat’s cheese made at Fielding Cottage on the Steggles family farm near Honingham, just west of Norwich. It is a mild, semi-soft cheese, often described as a ‘goat brie,’ though I find that confusing. It has a delicate flavour and a sumptuous texture. The name comes from the River Wensum which winds its way across Norfolk and through Norwich.

Baron Bigod (pronounced By God, by some, and Bigg-od by others) is made at Fen Farm near Bungay, on Suffolk's northern edge. Made using a Brie-de-Meaux recipe Baron Bigod has a silky breakdown under the rind and balances a clean lactic brightness with mushroomy, vegetal notes (Neal’s Yard Dairy). I always enjoy Brie-de-Meaux and Baron Bigod is as good as any, and better than most. It is surely one of the best cheeses made in England.

Digression alert! Last November we lunched at ‘Pick and Cheese’ at Seven Dials in London, where I had the privilege of tasting Truffle Baron Bigod, the same cheese with a layer of truffle infused ricotta.

Baron Bigod is expensive, the truffled version is, in Lynne’s words, extravagant. As she does not like truffles, I fear I cannot justify such extravagance.

Truffled Baron Bigod, Pick and Cheese

​

Digression over.

The sausage is a Suffolk chorizo. In 2019 we visited the Countryfile Live exhibition at Blenheim in Oxfordshire where we encountered the prize-winning Suffolk Salami Company in the British charcuterie tent.

Lane Farm Foods, Countryfile Live

Everything they produce is made at Lane farm in the village of Brundish, 20Kkm, as the crow flies, northwest of Aldeburgh. They make their chorizo with DOP Pimentón de la Vera paprika, a smoked paprika imported from Spain, but otherwise ingredients are local. It is smaller in circumference and more densely packed with pork than the mass-produced chorizo imported by supermarkets. Whether Spanish artisan chorizo’s are like this I do not know, but it matters not. This is a spicy, meaty delight and encouraged us to return to the shop and acquire a fennel salami to take home.

And In Conclusion….

We ate many other things during our stay, which were not particularly Suffolk, including an excellent pair of Barnsley chops from the local artisan butcher. There were also several, ‘cup-of-tea-and-a-sandwich lunches, and an occasionally beer and a packet of crisps. After all the food, I should mention that Suffolk is home to the excellent Adnam’s Brewery - and half a dozen or more wineries. We might possibly investigate those another time.

And we did not just eat. We visited castles and Anglo-Saxon burial grounds, old churches, local museums and more, as can be found in the other Aldeburgh post (coming soonish)

Malta: Eating and Drinking

Searching Out the Food and Drink that Makes Malta Special

Malta

We spent a week in Malta, nowhere near long enough to become experts on Maltese cuisine, but time enough to eat in several cafés and restaurants, and peruse the menus of many more. We were not interested in the myriad bars hawking Aperol spritz – two for the price of one during certain hours - not just because Aperol is not our drink, but because such bars can be found anywhere from Liverpool to Ljubljana. We were, though, interested to discover that every Maltese restaurant has rabbit on the menu. Now, that makes Malta special.

Meat

Rabbit

Rabbit is so popular in Malta that almost every restaurant heads its ‘meat mains’ with ‘Maltese Rabbit Stew.’ It is an ordinary sort of stew with onions, garlic, red wine, tomato, nutmeg, various herbs and chopped vegetables, but none the worse for that. Lynne enjoyed hers, she always likes a rabbit, though lurking in the depths was a big block of offal; kidneys, liver and other organs. We generally both enjoy liver and kidney, but rabbit’s offal has a strong, rather rank flavour which she found disagreeable.

Maltese Rabbit Stew

The Maltese used to hunt rabbit, but loss of habitat and over-exploitation have reduced the wild population so hunting is now strictly controlled. Most rabbits on Valetta’s menus are locally farmed.

Pulled Rabbit Rigatoni

When it was my turn for rabbit, I chose pulled rabbit rigatoni. Maltese food is heavily influenced by their neighbours across the sea to the north, and every menu offers a multitude of pasta dishes. The rabbit had been so assiduously shredded that almost became part of the sauce, but I enjoyed the full rich flavour and the fresh, al dente pasta.

Veal

Veal virtually disappeared in the UK over 20 years ago over justified animal welfare concerns. The EU has introduced strict regulation since then, the notorious ‘veal crates’ have been banned and welfare standards raised considerably. On that basis I decided that while Lynne ate her rabbit, I would indulge in the unaccustomed pleasure of veal. And a fine piece of meat it was, luxuriating in its lemony sauce.

Veal with a Lemon Sauce

I had some qualms, not everything is perfect in the European veal industry, but I do not accept the still surprisingly prevalent British view that ‘all foreigners are beastly to animals, cos,… well ...they're foreign, aren’t they?’

Wild Boar

Although not native to Malta wild boar were introduced in ancient times for hunting, and thrived. They continue to thrive despite the loss of habitat. They are a nuisance to farmers and a nuisance when they charge down the streets of small towns. The herd is managed and licences are issued to cull the excess.

Wild boar stew

Some wild boar is game-y, some less so. This example, stewed in red wine and surrounded by puréed cauliflower was of the game-y variety. Well-cooked and tender, I enjoyed it very much.

Most restaurants will offer steak, too, if you want to spend money, but lamb and pork exercise menu writers far less. Even chicken only puts in an occasional appearance.

Fish and Sea Food

For an island nation, the Maltese do not seem that interested in fish. Occasionally dourada or swordfish appear on menus, but the ever-presents are sea food such as prawns, lobsters. mussels, octopus and squid. Prawns and lobsters are largely corralled in the starters section, where we no longer go as we cannot eat a starter and a main course (one of the joys of getting older!) or among the pastas.

My friend Brian suggested I should try sea urchin with pasta, as he had been amazed that they bothered to collect and then cook anything so insubstantial with so little flavour. I would have given them a go, but found they are only available September to March and we visited in April.

Mussels

Mussels are much more familiar and, as elsewhere, can be starters or a main course depending on portion size.

Mussels

Lynne enjoyed these moules marinière which we extremely large and fleshy. They came with the inevitable frites.

Squid

Squid is always popular and the usual Maltese way with is to slice up small squid and fry them in tempura batter.

Battered squid, Marsaxlokk

Lynne ate her squid on the dock at Marsaxlokk. It was fine, she said, but there was just too much of it.

Octopus

Octopus with Garlic is the Rabbit Stew of the sea, i.e. it is on every menu and usually right at the top. We both tried it, Lynne in Valletta, me in Marsaxlokk.

Garlic Octopus, Marsaxlokk

We both thought the garlic could have been more assertive and although I would not want rubbery octopus, I would have preferred a little more texture. I suppose the quantity of garlic and precise duration of cooking are matters of personal preference, there is no one ‘correct’ way to cook an octopus (though of course, I am right).

Desserts

I have admitted that we cannot manage starters any more, sadly the same is often true of desserts. But here are a couple we enjoyed.

Halva Ice Cream

Halva was not much in evidence anywhere else, but it did turn up in an ice-cream. Densely textured and very sweet, it was sumptuous rather than subtle.

Halva ice cream

Imqaret

A traditional Maltese dessert of spiced date paste, in a triangular pastry case, deep fried and sprinkled with chopped nuts.

Imqaret

There are more traditional Maltese desserts and I would happily do further research on this subject.

Snacks and Light Lunches

Pastizzi, Ftira and Arancini

(Thanks to Wilson and Norma without whose advice we might easily have missed pastizzi completely.) A pastizz is a traditional savoury made by folding filo or puff pastry round ricotta cheese or curried peas.

Two pastizzi, one peas, one cheese

The ricotta version is excellent, but the real star for me were pea pastizzi. Dried green split peas are boiled almost to a mush with a little onion, garlic and mild curry powder, enfolded in pastry and baked. From such simple ingredients comes one of the world’s finest lunchtime snacks. They are extraordinarily popular throughout Malta, costing €1 each in Valletta or €0.60 on Gozo.

Ftira is a small ring-shaped bread, but in a café ‘ftira’ means such a bread filled with tuna (in our case) or sardine, tomato and more. Given the quality of Maltese bread, ftira are predictably, a delight.

Arancini at the front, ftira on the plate behind

Arancini, as the name implies, are Italian (specifically Sicilian) but are widely available in Malta. They consist of a filling, we chose ham and cheese, inserted into a ball of rice which is breadcrumbed and deep fried.

Ham and cheese arancini

It looks good, but was the least interesting of these three, perhaps because of our choice of filling; wet cured ham and ricotta cheese hardly pack a flavour punch.

A Salad

Cafés are not abundant in the citadel of Victoria, the unofficial capital of the island of Gozo. 21st century commercialism would jar against the old stones, though doubtless there was plenty of crude commercialism in the citadel’s heyday. There are, though, a couple of restaurants, and we found our way to one - via two flights of stone stairs and a circular staircase – and ordered a sharing salad.

A sizeable platter of cheese, tomatoes, onions, olives and capers soon arrived. It looked impressive, and once we had poured olive oil all over it, it tasted wonderful. The salad, though, raises two issues not covered hitherto, bread and cheese.

Sharing salad, Gozo

Bread

Maltese bread, with a crisp crust and firm interior, was uniformly excellent and may be the best bread we have encountered. French baguettes are superb – or were before they started adding preservatives to make it last longer – the black breads of the Baltic states, spread with garlic butter, bring back fond memories, but neither quite match the Maltese. It is not only excellent, but versatile - it even toasts well.

Cheese

Malta has few cows – they need too much space – so most cheese, including that in our salad, is made from sheep’s milk. Some of the cheeselets can be seen to be covered in something dark. These are speciality known as gbejniet tal-bzar – cheese rolled in crushed black peppercorns and matured for few days. We bought some earlier to try at home.

Gbejbiet tal-bzar

I thought the cheese was better without the pepper, others may disagree.

Drinking

Wine

Palatino Merlot

We drank Maltese wines almost exclusively. Most Valletta restaurants provide a short list of wines at €22 - €28 (they retail at €7 - €9) covering the usual grape varieties.  Quality wines are designated DOK (Denominazzjoni ta' l-Oriġini Kontrollata) Malta or Gozo depending on origin. Most lists also offer a selection of more expensive cuvées but we did not venture there.

Ulysses Shiraz

The Palatino Merlot, was a soft fruity wine, easy drinking and very pleasant, but their Sauvignon Blanc was a little disappointing, falling uncomfortably between the New Zealand and French styles. We drank the Sauvignon Blanc with lunch by the harbour in the seaside village of Marsaxlokk where our disappointment was eased by prices dropping from the Valletta range to a pleasing €12 - €15.

Marsovin’s Caravaggio Chenin Blanc, unlike Caravaggio himself, was too well-mannered and could have been spikier. Their Ulysses Shiraz (POK Gozo) was excellent. Rich with tannins it was well armed to take on my wild boar.

Beer

The most drunk beer in Malta is Cisk, which can be see in several of the ‘light lunch’ photos above. It was not a beer I enjoyed much, being somewhat short of flavour and not particularly refreshing, but it was cheap. The same brewery (Farsons) produces Hopleaf Pale Ale which has more flavour and a pleasant bitterness. There are also several craft beers which could be explored.

And Finally...

A Michelin Starred Pig’s Ear

The day we travelled to Malta, we were up at 2.30, caught a plane from Manchester at 7.00 and arrived in Malta on time at 11.30 (with a +1 hour time change). After a little difficulty first locating our prebooked complimentary taxi, and then our apartment block (we had been given the wrong address) we were dropped off at 12.30. There was no reception and no way to get in until we were provided  with the key codes, promised between 2.00 and 3.00.

Tired, hungry and thirsty we dragged our suitcase to Market Street which, our homework had suggested, would be full of restaurants. It was indeed, the pedestrianised street had covered decks by the roadside at the bottom end and further up a line of plastic ’tents’ down the centre.

We reached the first deck, saw the word ‘snack’ on the menu outside, climbed aboard and sat down. We made our choices, turned over the menu and saw the €125 set menu with a flight of matched wines costing much the same. We had apparently strayed into Michelin star territory while in search of a lunchtime snack. Never mind, an obliging young man took our order for a sharing plate of Serrano ham, a bottle each of Sarson’s Hopleaf Pale Ale, a big bottle of water and two pig’s ears.

We waited some time, but eventually our beers arrive, as did the water (which had becoming increasingly important) and the bread and olive oil without which no Maltese meal can start.

A further wait ensued before the ham arrived. In Michelin star style it arrived, not alone but with a bowl of olives and a little offering of fishy paté.

Serrano Ham, Bread and Olives, Grain Street, Valletta

After some pleasant nibbling we were starting to feel better physically, but time had moved on and neither our key codes had arrived, nor our pig’s ears.

Years ago, I would regularly enjoy a day’s walking with Brian, Francis, Mike and whoever else was available. Brian would always turn up with a greasy paper bag containing two deep fried pig’s ears he had bought at the dog food stall in Stafford market. He threw them to the fittest and most eager member of our group, Francis’ dog Dino, who crunched them up with relish.

I have eaten pig’s ears myself (as has Brian) not from the dog food counter but in restaurants in Portugal. We agree that there is a porblem with them; inside every bite there is a strip of cartilage, just like there is in our own ears, and it is not pleasant. So why had I ordered them? Bravado? Stupidity? I don't know.

Michelin stars are not handed out for nothing and we were at Grain Street, one of Malta's three such restaurants. The pig’s ears that finally arrived were sweet and porky, the blobs of tarragon infused mayonnaise a lovely accompaniment. And the cartilage? I do not know where it went, but I found myself pondering whether it had removed by butchery, cookery or wizardry.

Pig's Ear, Grain Street, Valletta

I should have ordered one between us, but we finished the two and felt replete. But 3 o’clock had passed and we still had no key codes. I called our contact number and found the phone switched off, a second number went to voicemail and I left an anxious message. We wondered what we should do if we had been scammed (despite using a major booking company) and there was no apartment. Then my phone rang, there was no apology, but the promise of an immediate Whats Ap message, and a few minutes later our problems were over.

Pressure off, we were able to acknowledge how much we had enjoyed our Michelin starred snack. It cost a lot for  a snack, but it served as our main meal for the day, making it a bargain. We picked up some bread, salami and a bottle of wine in a convenience store, found our apartment and relaxed after a long and occasionally stressful day.

In Conclusion

Malta produces, meat and seafood dishes, pastries, salads, desserts and wines of high quality. Enjoy them. If, however, you don’t like their food, no worries, you can exist on pizzas and burgers….

…but, if that is how you feel, why not consider staying at home. Malta, like Venice, Amsterdam, the Canaries and others is struggling under the pressure of too many tourists.