MY DATE WITH A DATE FRITTER: Is This Europe's Most Delectable Dessert?
Is it worth flying to Malta for this? Ovvjament, iqarqu (that's Maltese for obviously)
RABAT/MDINA, MALTA — What’s in an imqaret? It’s a Maltese date fritter, one of the signature treats of this quixotic archipelago where they say Mel Gibson is going to start filming a TV series sometime soon about the Siege of Malta.
An imqaret is, according to VisitMalta, a tasty deep-fried diamond-shaped pastry pocket filled with date paste and fennel seed. You find these all over Malta, in bakeries and such, but the one I had pictured above was not only sensationally cinematic in the visual sense, but also in the taste department.
It came to me like a tangy North African dream on a plate at Root 81, a Michelin-starred restaurant atop Saqqajja Hill in Rabat — the one in Malta, not Morocco. Root 81’s elevated-experience imqarets were drizzled with dried orange peel and paired with rum raisin ice cream.
This was one of those rare instances when a dessert did not leave me wanting chocolate. For these were the flavors of a mysterious Maltese past of Barbary pirates and knights’ boozy banquets, of ochre-hued byways that end by the shore of a sapphire blue sea, a soupçon of Sicilian orchards; your anti-apple pie; a stealthily seductive plate of pure culinary exaltation.
My dining companion, S.D., possibly did not realize that whatever he was saying while I consumed Chef Patron Robert Cassar’s suggestively not-too-sweet dessert, which I paired with an orangey Kinnie, I wasn’t listening, because this is a dish that spoke to me directly. I don’t know if I wanted more of it, but I do know that I didn’t want less. It was easily within the Top 10 Desserts of the decade, and yes, I’ve had the mixed fortune of having lived in Paris.
I had a preview, too. My meal aboard KM Malta Airlines included a pair of mini imqarets, as pictured in the upper right of this photo from the meal service:
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