The Travel Critic

Here’s a version with a bit of that Giles Coren-esque mix of self-deprecation, mild snobbery, observational humour and slightly over-engineered annoyance:

I always feel sorry for restaurants in resort towns.

Imagine the predicament. Every evening a river of holidaymakers shuffles past your front door, peering at menus laminated sometime during the Ottoman Empire, trying to decide between five or six almost identical tavernas. The food is probably broadly the same, the prices broadly the same, and yet one place ends up rammed while the others stare wistfully at empty tables and contemplate bankruptcy.

Humans are wonderfully predictable. We all gravitate towards the busy one. If I ran a restaurant,which would be a catastrophically bad idea, I wouldn’t spend money on advertising. I’d simply pay a dozen pensioners to sit at tables from 5pm every evening, drinking water and looking delighted. The crowd would follow.

And so, being as predictable as everyone else, I chose Maistrali.

Perhaps I’m doing the neighbouring restaurants a disservice because Maistrali did also look rather nice and had a respectable review score. The menu was appealing, the staff were warm and friendly, the setting charming, and naturally the atmosphere was excellent because the place was absolutely full.

The starters arrived promptly and were perfectly pleasant. Then, halfway through eating them, the mains appeared from nowhere like an ambush.

Now, if I’m in a sushi restaurant, food arriving in a random sequence is part of the deal. That’s the charm. But when one course is literally called a starter and the next one a main, I rather like there to be a small pause between the two. A moment to regroup. To reflect. To order another drink. To remember what country I’m in.

Instead, there was suddenly a chicken skewer occupying valuable table space while I was still tackling my starter.

To be fair, the skewer looked as though it had reached a critical stage in its development. It either needed serving immediately or it was about to become charcoal. As it turned out, it leaned rather heavily towards the charcoal end of the spectrum.

Which rather sums up the experience. Nothing dreadful. Nothing remotely offensive. In fact, much of it was perfectly enjoyable. But neither was it the memorable Greek meal I’d been hoping for.

Look, Maistrali is fine. Half the town seems to think so, and perhaps they’re right. The atmosphere is lively, the staff are lovely and you’ll have a perfectly decent evening.

It just wasn’t the best meal I’ve had. And in a town full of restaurants, “perfectly decent” isn’t always enough.