Legligin, Valletta. English boards and all, some places earn the exception.
Over the years of traveling I’ve collected a small set of heuristics for deciding where to eat. Nothing sophisticated. They’re ordered the way you’d run into them, from the far end of the street all the way down to the table.
They’re all about what to avoid, not what to look for. I have no idea what makes a great restaurant, but I know what makes a bad one, so I subtract and eat wherever’s left.
This is a living post. I’ll keep adding heuristics as I discover them.
No magnets in sight
The magnet stands are a border. On one side of it restaurants compete for tourists, on the other side for locals. I always eat on the other side, even when it costs me another fifteen minutes of walking.
No touts, no hostess
Nobody out front handing me a menu or waving me toward a table. If the food is good, the room does the inviting: full tables, loud conversations, staff too busy to stand outside.
Local language only*
No English menu, and staff that can barely take an order in English. Ordering should feel slightly difficult. If a place never bothered to translate anything, it’s because everyone who eats there already understands.
*This one is very hard to satisfy nowadays. Some English is fine, the translation just has to feel like an afterthought, not like the real menu.
One-page menu
The whole menu fits on one page. No lamination, no photos, sometimes a few dishes crossed out by evening. That’s fine. It means they cook whatever came in this morning, and they’ve been cooking the same few things for years.
No forks
This one applies where the local cuisine eats with chopsticks or hands. The fork is the first thing a restaurant changes for tourists, and the recipes are usually the second. When I ask for a fork and get a confused look, I order with confidence.
These places were never meant for us, and that’s exactly why we look for them.