This is part one in a two-part series of articles. 

Before tourism really took off in the 1960s, “eating out” represented an extraordinary experience. Sure, restaurants, trattorie, bistros and taverns existed, however, they mostly catered for British servicemen and foreign visitors in Malta or for Maltese who strayed far from their residences, like those visiting St Paul’s Bay (Gillieru and Veċċja), Rabat (Pont de Vue), Għajn Tuffieħa (Riviera), Birżebbuġa (Dowdall’s), Gozo (Il-Barakka tal-Mġarr) and a few more.

Promotion for the restaurant of the Hotel d’Angleterre in St Lucia Street, Valletta.Promotion for the restaurant of the Hotel d’Angleterre in St Lucia Street, Valletta.

Generally, one dined out of home as a necessity, not as a choice. Many hotels provided meals but some standalone eating establishments could also be found. For an excellent overview of early hospitality establishments in Malta, see Joseph Cassar Pullicino’s essay Some 19th century hotels in Malta in Melita Historica, vol.  VIII, no 2, 1981. 

How was the food served at hotel restaurants? One genuinely sympathetic visitor to Malta in 1914 paints a lurid picture of the situation for the long-term hotel resident: “Gradually, a kind of rot steals into the arrangements. The meat becomes of poorer quality, the cooking deteriorates, the indigestible pudding of chopped lemon peel becomes more and more frequent and you have cheap margarine instead of butter.”

Maltese hoteliers were only interested in get-rich-quick business, “the huckstering element is deep-rooted in the Maltese psychology”, as John Wignacourt wrote in The Odd Man in Malta, London, 1914.

A Hotel d’Angleterre advertising postcard; note the imposing painted frieze round the dining room.A Hotel d’Angleterre advertising postcard; note the imposing painted frieze round the dining room.

This contrasts with home-cooking in Malta – some British visitors were ecstatic, others far less so. In the 1910 book Malta, Fredrick W. Ryan sang the praises of domestic Maltese cooks who raided the market at 5am: “for fish, fowl, kid (in lieu of lamb), watermelons and prickly pears and all the ingredients for wonderful braġjoli, ravjoli or timpani and other mysterious dishes in the Maltese menu.”

This generous opinion about the Michelin yumminess of Maltese home-cooking hardly commanded universal acclaim. Gladys Peto, writing in 1928 in Malta and Gibraltar, was actively unimpressed by the food served in Malta. Even when not positively awful, something was almost always wrong with it: “It tasted Maltese.”

Now one can overlook quite a lot but that Maltese food should taste Maltese was quite unforgivable.

Promotion card for the Mdina Guest House, 1930s.Promotion card for the Mdina Guest House, 1930s.

“The food is not really very good. Cows’ milk is available, but not recommended, as it is quite likely diluted with contaminated goats’ milk.

Maltese hoteliers were only interested in get-rich-quick business, ‘the huckstering element is deep-rooted in the Maltese psychology’

 “There is but little meat. The mutton is very like goat. At a dinner party, turkey, chickens and pigeon appear, according to the number of the guests and the importance of the party. They are, of course, a different size and shape but they all taste the same for they all taste of Malta”.

Peto adds: “You will encounter some perfectly horrible foods. There is, for example, roast kid. It has an abominable and unforgettable taste. And,  then, all foods seem to taste of Malta. Malta, I must explain, tastes of garlic, spice and the insides of old cupboards that are rarely scrubbed, with a suggestion of incense… a taste that palls after a year or so. The chickens are small and unsucculent, for they spend their lives in unsuccessful peckings round doorways and running away from motor cars.”

A 1930s advertising card of Qawra Tower dining place.A 1930s advertising card of Qawra Tower dining place.

The 20th century saw the introduction of a new promotion tool for commercial establishments – the postcard. Not many hotels and restaurants seem to have taken it up. In fact, I have found advertising postcards of very few restaurants and these cards also prove very rare,  which implies that print-runs must have been limited indeed. Almost all were produced abroad and some show excellent graphics.

They start with a bang. Carmelo Mamo, who ran the Hotel de Paris at no. 43, St John’s Street, Valletta, seems to have been the pioneer in restaurant postcard advertising. He commissioned the publishing firm Gustavo Modiano of Milan to produce his cards. Modiano was prolific in the Malta postcard scene between 1902 and 1906, when he seems to have lost interest, so it would be reasonable to date the Hotel de Paris card to that period.

The picture side shows a feast in the hotel’s dining room with many paunchy and moustachioed gentlemen carousing but also, strangely, two demure ladies in the foreground. The architecture of the room displays important baroque decoration, which makes me rather believe the hotel was in the antique Palazzo Xara, taken over in 1905 to house the very first National Museum in Malta.

The dining room of the Hotel d’Angleterre, 1910s.The dining room of the Hotel d’Angleterre, 1910s.

In the 19th century,  the Hotel de Paris ‒ later renamed the Grand Hotel de Paris ‒ was at no. 44, Strait Street. Palazzo Xara received a direct hit in the 1942 blitzkrieg and, today,  its footprint is taken up by the new post-war St John’s Square.

Carmelo Depares ran the Hotel d’Angleterre, in St Lucia Street, but with its entrance through no. 34, Strait Street, Valletta (across the road from the back of the law courts). At about the same time as the Hotel de Paris, Depares issued his own promotion cards, also printed in Milan but by Fratelli Armanino. These advertised, in elegant and striking lithograph, “the finest dining saloon” among its many amenities. Pity the English used was not as splendid as the hotel’s garden – the establishment, it boasts, was “fitted up with elegant furnisher”. A spell check might have suggested furniture instead.

Promotion of the Hotel de Paris restaurant by Carmelo Mamo.Promotion of the Hotel de Paris restaurant by Carmelo Mamo.

This hotel first opened in 1856, managed by Vincenzo and Giovanni Belluti, father and son. Its restaurant received restrained praise.

“A good table is kept, food being abundant and of good quality and the charges are moderate,” according to Muir’s 1860 Almanack. Apart from this advert, the hotel published, I believe slightly later, another postcard showing the restaurant in its full splendour. A high and imposing pictorial frieze under the painted ceiling looks seriously impressive and deserves in-depth study. This building too suffered heavily in World War II.

To be concluded next week

A Modiano postcard of the Hotel de Paris restaurant, early 1900s.A Modiano postcard of the Hotel de Paris restaurant, early 1900s.

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