Monday 25 May 2009

Boo in Malta - Sottovento

On the first evening of our trip James took us to the pretty walled city of Vittoriosa. The harbour has a number of bars and restaurants and was surprisingly busy, rowdy even in a nearby eatery where we could here live music and singing, for late on a Sunday evening, we got there at about 10pm.

Malta’s heavy Italian influence is evident in most of its restaurants. A mere 90km away from Sicily there are pizza/pasta heavy menus everywhere. Sottovento is no exception with most of the large menu consisting of these. James and Helen both opted for pizzas amd they looked very good.

James had the interesting combination of sausage, olives, peas and egg. The base was crisp and substantial, toppings were generous.



Helen's was topped with pepperoni and green pepper. We discussed this later, it seems that the peppers in Malta are far more subtle than the ones we're used to eating here in the UK, I would have exected the exact opposite, anyway, there was a lot of it on Helen's pizza at Sottovento, she picked some off.


Noy went for the prawn and tomato risotto. This was odd because she doesn't actually like prawns, thinking they would be big enough to pick out and liking all of the other components of the dish she was disapointed to find they were very small and there were a lot of them. Presentation could be improved, the use of a bowl rather than a plate might be a good idea but risotto is risotto and the portion was huge, in all Noy was pleased with it.


I had the trio of smoked fish salad which comprised of salmon, tuna and swordfish and was really very good. I would have liked a little more swordfish and less salmon, by the end of the meal the latter had gotten a bit much. The salad was well dressed, the tomatoes and olives were a nice addition.


The setting was the thing that made this meal, really very beautiful, overlooking the little harbour really envoked that holiday vibe which we soaked up, sipping a very satisfactory bottle of house white, imagining which beach we might venture to in the morning. The following day we went to Gozo, the beach looked like this..



Sottovento
Vittoriosa, Malta
7/10

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