HAMMETT’S MACINA!!!!! Where tapas style eating is the order of the day and sharing plates of yummy goodness is handled! Located in the leafy suburb of Senglea, and décor that is marble, brass furnishings, with a mix of booth style and table seating screams chic, comfy and luxurious, exactly the setting needed for lunch.
The menu here is split into 9, yep, NINE categories’ people! It is a selection of dishes that pays homage to the history of Malta. Interestingly, the restaurant no longer offers tasting menus and with valid reason. The team still want to serve amazing food to the locals all year round and not just to tourist during season. Kudos to them because the food here is GOODT! And yes, you guessed right, a nine category menu. you know we got our sampling on 😀!
After our much needed refreshing drinks, because the HEAT IS ON!!! Our first course was from the rip & drip category – the cream of pistachio and 😮… it was DIVINE. Quick disclaimer, there may be a lot of inferred ‘oohing’ and ‘ahhhing’ because the food here got me like that. Right, back to this cream of pistachio. To be honest, I didn’t know what to expect, I assumed it would be some kind of soup (‘cream’) with like bread. I mean ‘rip & drip’ right? Not quite.. it was better, waaaayyyyy better!!! The cream of pistachio was indeed creamy, but not in a soup. More like a paste / spread with textures that just exploded in your mouth – garlic, dried chilli, aubergine and olive oil .. all whipped to perfection! Served with bread that had honey notes?! Yeah people, you had a sweet lingering taste on your palate.
For our raw & cured, we sampled Rabbit liver Ashkenazi. Didn’t think I was a fan of Rabbit per se, but the Maltese create some darn good Rabbit is all I’m saying! This Rabbit liver though? The mac daddy of liver pâté! It was chopped liver, lardo, honey mustard, fermented cucumber, Phew!
Like I said t’was the ONE! And it was DELISH! Again, creamy, smooth and texture was the order of the day. I also liked that the brioche was thinly cut allowing you to scoop hearty amounts of this creamy goodness. One time for balanced ratio 😀!
Chicken pastila was our choice for ‘grains’ and this dish threw us for the loop like! First off it was a pastry?! A filo pastry stuffed with rice, pistachio, Moroccan spice, apricot with icing sugar on the top and a pour over sauce!
This was not pudding. I don’t know how Chef did it, but it was YUM!!! Like seriously yummy! Again, it was the perfect balance of sweet and savoury. For the ‘garden’, ‘land’ and ‘meze’ categories we sampled whole roasted cauliflower, beef flank and pork belly bites.
Just when we thought we were done, because trust me, even though this is tapas style eating, the portions are not tapas style portions. Do you see the cauliflower people, it is a W H O L E cauliflower 😀. Then came pudding, a tahini fondant, essentially a chocolate sorbet, kataifi pistachio, sesame.
one word – SCRUMPTIOUS 😋 !
Come on now, Hammett’s Macina, you give tapas style eating a whole new meaning! Sooooo goodt!
Cheers
Ndidi
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