Era Ora Steakhouse

Era Ora serves three beef tartares and won't say what's in this one. Its author's own recipe suggests passion fruit, soy and ginger — which explains a great deal and rescues nothing.

The review

Era Ora is a temple to dry-aged beef — reliquary cabinets, Spanish Angus, full-blood Wagyu, a terrace over Balluta Bay. Its raw section holds three separate beef tartares. 'Our Tartare' at €20 shows its whole hand: hand-cut beef, olive oil, French mustard, Tabasco, pepper, salt. The Neanderthal at €40 brings bone marrow, caviar and dehydrated yolk. And the Braciami Ancora at €25 — the one I ate — is named after the Italian meat guide that voted this place the best Italian steakhouse in Europe two years running. A dish named after its own trophy, and that is the most specific thing the menu will tell you about it: 'an intense tartare balancing delicacy, savouriness and depth.' A slogan, not a description. Every neighbouring plate lists numbered allergens; this one carries the asterisk the kitchen reserves for the Menu of the Day and the Grill Experience — officially, a dish with no fixed recipe. Until recently it bore Chef Paola Marsella's name, and the one tartare recipe she ever published is specific indeed: Piedmontese Fassona fillet with fresh ginger, a spoon of soy, passion fruit, lime, fennel and pink peppercorns. Whether that is what reaches Balluta Bay is inference rather than fact, but it matches the plate exactly, and it explains the sweet tropical thread and the vague eastward lean I could not place at the time. Knowing rescues nothing. Passion fruit and soy are a great deal of sugar and a great deal of salt competing for the same mouthful, and cold raw beef loses that argument every time; what arrived was sweet, briny and unfocused, the meat reduced to texture. A year ago this cost €35 and weighed 80 grams. Today it costs €25, states no weight, and the section is signed by a different chef. Order the €20 one.

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