The Black Egg | Dark interior décor with fine golden edges at every corner and black marble tables await you for your brunch.
Brunch. When did it start, really? When did it become a thing? It is something which most of us do these days. It is a great way to meet and socialize over food, without the awkward grumpiness of early mornings or the formality of evening dinners. Perfect.
Luckily, a lot of nice places where to brunch have opened recently in the Maltese islands that can cater for our social occasions.
One such place is The Black Egg. Located along the Ta’ Xbiex seafront, it is very difficult to miss, and parking is relatively easy on most days – a blessing on these islands. If like us, you manage to get a table near the front (we got it through sheer luck, because we had no booking and when we arrived the place was full up), you get a quite beautiful view of the sea and the capital.
Dark interior décor with fine golden edges at every corner, and black marble tables await you inside. The place cries posh at every angle.
Soon after we adapted to our surroundings and settled in, we turned our attention to the brunch menu. It is quite varied, with a series of brunch specials, including oysters, if you fancy them early in the day. The pricing is not too bad considering how nice the environment is.
The signature Black Egg dish comes at €14, with the highest of the brunching lot (Duck and Waffle) setting you back by €18. This is accompanied by a nice and to-the-point drinks menu, including three brunch cocktails costing a respectable €7, if you fancy a Bellini, Mimosa or Espresso Martini to start with (which we did).
Of course, having driven all the way here, we decided to go for the signature dish – The Black Egg. It is a simple but beautifully presented dish. Poached egg over smashed avocado served on crunchy sourdough bread. To that, we added smoked salmon first because why not? The whole was topped with prawn crackers which we thought were a nice and crunchy touch.
The particular thing here is that, as the name promises, the egg is black, hence the name. If you are wondering how they achieve that, we feel you, so we asked. We now know because they told us, but as long as we promised not to tell, we won’t because we like to think we are nice people who keep their promises.
The egg was beautifully cooked and allowed us to gaze (and film) for a couple of seconds at the dripping yolk. Who doesn’t like to spend a few seconds gazing at dripping egg yolk? If it is your dish you get excited, if it’s someone else’s you get hungry, and jealous. The whole dish was delicious.
The bread was thick and crunchy, an achievement considering all the juices coming through to it. The salmon tasted good. The salad, fresh. Sweet mustard sauce is served on the side – we suggest you go easy on how much you pour over your dish because it has quite a strong, pungent taste.
The second dish we ordered was confit duck leg with two fancy (and thin) waffles, orange segments, a fried egg and sweet mustard syrup. It is a rich-looking, intense and compelling dish which overall we found enjoyable. The pieces of duck had an enjoyably crispy exterior, with a tender and meaty body.
The waffles absorbed all the juices, but being so thin, there wasn’t much of a waffle feeling left to enjoy soon after starting. Then again it is a question of taste, and some people might find themselves preferring these over the larger, thicker and more traditional waffles.
For dessert, we opted for warm brioche dipped in vanilla anglaise, cinnamon sugar, fresh toffee apple and whipped cream. It may sound like a lot, but it is not. What we got were two chunky squarish brioches, one with apple and the other with cream. Light, enjoyable, but not something we raved about for much long (in fact, we didn’t rave about them at all).
So, overall, plenty of reasons why we think you should go to The Black Egg for your brunch (we cannot say dinner cause, we’ve never been there for that). The place is really nice, the staff are very helpful and the food is very good.
As for food, the main dishes were colourful, inviting, but most importantly, delicious. Each item in both complemented the other. It is what we would call, a great brunch in a very refined environment.
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