Cheese & Cuts Was Never On My List. Then Marvin Schembri Became the Head Chef.

There are restaurants you actively avoid, and then there are restaurants you simply never think about.

I’d known about Cheese & Cuts for years. I knew the premise: Italian comfort food, trattoria-style, and a serious affection for cheese and cured meats. I’d seen the dishes on social media, read the menus, heard people mention it. Yet, for no particular reason, I’d never really felt compelled to go. No criticism attached. It just never sparked my interest.

That changed about a month ago, when I heard that Marvin Schembri had become Executive Head Chef.

 

For context, I was first introduced to Marvin’s cooking at The Skyroom Cocktail Bar & Grill in Sliema, where he was Head Chef. His particular way with seafood, pasta and especially crudo stayed with me.

What you need to know about Marvin’s cooking is that when he takes over a kitchen, he doesn’t impose some enormous chef-shaped personality onto the restaurant. He works within its identity, then starts playing with the edges. You can see some of that here already, with seafood and crudo finding their way onto the menu alongside the Italian comfort food Cheese & Cuts is known for. Owner Ramon Buhagiar made a smart appointment.

The Starters

The Bruschetta Mediterranea (€14) immediately established that nobody here was particularly interested in dainty portions.

I had the standard bruschetta dimensions in my head. Instead, two enormous pieces of grilled bread arrived carrying grilled vegetables and stracciatella, somewhere between a starter and something an Italian grandmother would insist you eat because you “look thin”. Rustic, comforting and absolutely one to share when you’ve ordered half the menu after it.

 

The Beef Tataki (€18) was firmly at the top end of the table for me. Almost indecently pink through the middle under a lacquer of hoisin and miso, with that savoury-sweet hit giving the beef just enough interference. One of those dishes where adding anything else would probably be a mistake.

 

With this many starters, democracy eventually demands a lower ranking. The trio of Pork Cheek Croquettes (€16) with porcini and cheese fondue landed at the bottom of mine. Not because the quality wasn’t there, it absolutely was. Rich, earthy and firmly in comfort-food territory, it just wasn’t personally the plate I’d be fighting anyone for the final forkful of. My guests disagreed.

 

The Calamari (€18) doesn’t attempt a reinvention because, frankly, calamari doesn’t require one. Crisp, properly seasoned, house-made tartare sauce. Job done.

 

More unexpected was the Sea Bass Tempura (€18). We’re so accustomed to seeing prawns wearing the tempura jacket that finding sea bass inside it causes a small moment of recalibration. Chunkier, flakier and substantial enough that the fish doesn’t disappear behind the batter.

 

The Octopus (€20) took things somewhere richer. Those curled, almost sculptural pieces arrived with black truffle worked into the equation, sitting on a creamy base that took octopus somewhere I don’t often see it: comfort-food territory.

Pasta of Choice

The Rabbit Agnolotti (€18). Handmade pasta, rabbit, tomato, peas, basil and rabbit jus. Essentially, many of the familiar bearings of Maltese rabbit have been dismantled and put back together in a much silkier form. Even the peas, hardly nature’s great aesthetic triumph, look like they were invited deliberately. It’s recognisably Maltese without carrying the usual Sunday-lunch gravitational pull.

 

The Cheese Wheel (€18) involves linguine worked directly inside a Grana Padano wheel. It isn’t prepared tableside, but depending on where you’re sitting, you’ve got a very good vantage point of the chef working the pasta through the cheese before it makes its way over.

 

There are optional additions including guanciale, pistachio or burrata; we went with pistachio. And despite the obvious theatre of the whole operation, the portion is no prop. It’s substantial, with the pistachio bringing a nuttiness that works brilliantly against all that Grana Padano.

 

The One I’m Coming Back For

I didn’t order the Veal (€38). This needs documenting because I subsequently saw it.

Dutch veal on the bone, soft Taleggio polenta and veal jus. It is now sitting rather aggressively on my unfinished business list.

Next time.

And Finally, Cheese. Obviously.

It would be slightly ridiculous to leave Cheese & Cuts without involving the actual cheese counter. You can choose your cheeses directly from the selection on display and have them put together on a board with walnuts and grapes. We saved ours until the end of the meal, because apparently dessert can just be cheese if everyone agrees not to question it.

Cheese & Cuts sits somewhere between neighbourhood Italian restaurant and somewhere you can very easily lose all sense of moderation around a wheel of Grana Padano. Marvin’s refinement is definitely in the room, but thankfully he hasn’t come in and given the place an identity crisis. The menu still knows exactly what sort of restaurant it’s in; it has just become rather more interesting about it.

I’d never eaten here before, so I can’t tell you what Cheese & Cuts was. I can only tell you what it is now.

And I left already knowing what I hadn’t ordered. Which, really, is how a restaurant gets you twice.

Cheese & Cuts
Oratory Street
Naxxar
Website