Il-Barri Restaurant — Restaurant in L-Imġarr

My wife and I went there with our son to have a traditional lunch on Saturday. We arrived at roughly half past noon and soon after we ordered an appetizer portion of local snails, to be followed by three mains. Whereas the starter came straight away, we were left waiting endlessly for an additional 45 minutes for the main courses to arrive despite the restaurant not being that busy and there being more than adequate number of waiting staff.

After seeing other tables receiving their orders despite arriving considerably later than us, and asking two different waiters politely as to whether anything was wrong with our order, all the staff could literally care less, aside from a weak attempt at trying to address our long waiting time by bringing us some local bread (would have been quite wonderful had they been as generous with the snails stew, but now it makes sense).

Not once did they try to come and explain why the order was taking so long, and after more than an hour, we decided to literally take our things and storm off, after addressing the issue with the head waiter who seemed uninterested in understanding in what went wrong and did not even apologise for this sad experience. They requested payment for what we ordered till then, we paid and left.

There are plenty of restaurants serving similar cuisine in the area, and would recommend any one of them over this establishment. We had come to this restaurant before, and the pity of it is mainly the way they handled the situation, because mistakes happen and sometimes you can expect things not to go perfectly. However, taking everything into consideration, I believe that this was one the worst dining experiences we have ever had.

Had they even apologised, I wouldn't have probably bothered to write...

Unfortunately, we didn't have a chance to eat anything there. When we arrived, there was a free table but there were still dirty dishes and unfinished drinks of previous guests. We sat there, the waiter asked if we wanted to stay for lunch and we confirmed and asked them to clean the table. Next to us, there was a group of women celebrating birthday. The same waiter was attending to them, passed us many times paying no attention to the fact, we were waiting all the time for someone to clean the table and maybe bring menus or anything. I'm not sure if we suddenly started being invisible or the waiter was so busy serving other guests but he passed us without even looking. Anyways, after 20-30 minutes (we waited really long) we decided to move to the neighbouring restaurant Ta Celita, which appeared to be a great choice, with excellent food and fantastic service.

Niestety, nie było nam dane spróbować specjałów tego miejsca. Kiedy tam dotarliśmy, był jeden wolny stolik, na którym stały brudne talerze i niedopite piwo poprzednich gości. Kelner zapytał, czy zostajemy na lunch, powiedzieliśmy że owszem i czekamy na sprzątnięcie stolika. Nie doczekaliśmy się. Obsługa zajęła się grupą pań siedzących obok i miała nas jak powietrze. Nikt nie posprzątał, nikt nie przyniósł menu, czułam się niewidzialna. Po prawie pół godziny czekania poszliśmy do sąsiedniej restauracji, Ta Celita, która okazała się strzałem w dziesiątkę. Zjedliśmy pyszny obiad, a obsługa robiła wszystko żeby nam ten...

Initially, we visited il-Barri to visit the wartime air-raid shelter that can be accessed from the restaurant and despite arriving late, were treated to a personal tour by a simply wonderful waitress. Despite not being Maltese herself (she was Serbian), she gave an informative and heartfelt tour of the shelter, which was brilliant. After the tour she helped us to make a booking for later that day, as we had already been impressed by what we had seen of the meals on offer.

Later that day we returned and were greeted by the most polite and courteous staff. We were shown to our table in the attractive and welcoming restaurant and provided with a complimentary platter of local foods (snails may not have been our choice but we tried them and were pleasantly surprised that they were quite nice). Having made our selections from the menu, we were served the most wonderful meal. There were offerings that would appeal to a sensitive English palette but we chose to have more local cuisine (sheep cheese croquette and rabbit livers, followed by rabbit spaghetti and a dish of horse meat). Our servings were plentiful, well presented and absolutely delicious. The food arrived in good time and the service throughout our meal was attentive, courteous and polite. Price wise, our meal was very reasonable and certainly much less that the tourist traps of Valetta.

When we return to Malta, il-Barri will definitely be on our list of places to visit...