M31 Restaurant — Restaurant in Mellieha

The food: The octopus was good, both fried and in the stew, but there's too much olive (?) oil in everything, including the vegan salad. It was so much oil in fact that my girlfriend got sick shortly afterwards. The vegan salad was so oily the bowl it came in glistened, the quinoa soaked in it and forming clumps. The artichokes were dry and slightly sour, the jar probably opened a long time ago, the roasted potatoes were starchy and flavourless. The same vegetables that came as my side dish were also in my girlfriend's vegan salad - oily and overly cooked, but flavourless. The octopus stew had a tomato sauce that was quite acidic, on the vinegary side. One other thing - I got a "fresh" lime and ginger juice, as advertised on the menu, that was just sparkling water with fruit syrup added, presented in a very pompous manner with a maraschino cherry on top.

The service: Overall nice, but we did find it strange that the waiter put our table napkins on our laps. Never experienced this at other restaurants, even actual fine dining venues.

The atmosphere: The toilets were nice and clean. The overall vibe of the place felt fakely pretentious and rushed. It was made up to look like a real fancy restaurant , but the food was mediocre and the appetizer "on the house" was two packs of Lurpak butter, covenience-store saltines and bread sticks, 5 olives and a bitter, yellow spread made from garlic and some unidentifiable yellow pea/lentil/bean(?). It's made to deceive customers into believing they are buying an experience to justify the above-average food prices. Having to constantly hear the traffic outside while dining as they left the door wide open...

Where do I start? It started when we entered and they pointed us to a table with one chair, while we were two. Then, we ordered some type of juice. There were several different juices on there, with supposedly distinct taste. I would say passion fruit and mango are a quite opposing taste usually. These were overly sweet, so that you could not taste the supposed fruit that was in there. To remedy the overly sweet taste of the passion fruit, the waitress decided to dilute with water…..

While we were waiting for the appetizer, there was one song on repeat for 15 minutes or so... not very professional. We had to make them aware, as did another table.

We ordered an appetizer, octopus, which was really good. They also put some free olives and bread. Then about 2 minutes later, while we had only just begun our appetizer, they brought the main course pastas. Extremely poor timing. My seafood pasta was horrendous. The pasta was extremely hot. However, there hardly any sauce, and the pasta tasted dry. The seafood part was only lukewarm. So, clearly this was not well matched and made separately. And just thrown onto a plate. Unacceptable. We got an excuse that someone did not show up. If only the service and the food matched the octopus appetizer... this could have been a different review.

I am wondering whether the owners also own the “hotel”, and decided to see if they could get some more money out of the building. If so, I would suggest to stop the...

We stayed in Mellieha for one week and had dinner at M31 twice. I am Coeliac and I went in one morning to ask about Gluten free (GF)choices for the menu. The staff all take great pride in their excellent customer service, they are knowledgeable and happy to take time talking through the menu, and local wines. They are careful to ensure that you don't over order, explaining size of main dishes and sides. All dishes are freshly cooked, local.fish bought each morning and prepared. They were careful ensuring the menu choices I made were GF, avoiding cross contamination as best possible within their kitchen. They always checked with the chef which dishes could be made GF. They provide warm gf bread and its warmed in an oven not the microwave. The a la carte menu and set menu are good I had GF pasta the first time and pan fried sea bass the second with roast potatoes and vegetables. Perfecrly cooked, delicious and we would recommend for excellent, quality, value...