Alex Dilling @ Ion Harbour
Alex Dilling @ Ion Harbour review at-a-glance
Awards: Two Michelin star (based on Chef Alex Dilling’s previous restaurant)
+Each dish from the kitchen is a technical wonder, showing off pristine ingredients that have been flawlessly prepared.
+Ion Harbour has one of the best settings possible with a wonderful view of the Valletta Harbour.
Verdict: Caviar, truffles, foie gras, and lots of shellfish - the menu at Ion Harbour seemed like Chef Dilling purposefully tailored it to my tastes. While this may have made me predisposed to love the meal, the kitchen nailed the landing. The food was the perfect blend of top-end luxurious ingredients, classic flavors, and modern techniques. After his current residency is done, I am excited to see where Alex ends up next. Wherever he goes, he will likely be gunning for a third star. Based on the level of skill that went into my meal at Ion Harbour, he seems likely to get one sooner or later.
Rating: 94/100
Would I revisit: Yes
Price I Paid: €175 for 8-course menu plus €18 for cheese supplement
Value: 13/20
Chef Alex Dilling and Ion Harbour Background
If you are reading this review, you likely have already heard of Chef Alex Dilling. He worked for some of the best chefs in the industry but blew up in popularity while he was head chef at two Michelin star The Greenhouse in London. At The Greenhouse, Dilling invented many of his signature dishes like Hunter Chicken and was known for his particularly stunning presentations, often featuring truffles or caviar. Unfortunately, The Greenhouse was part of the MARC restaurant group which had financial difficulties and declared bankruptcy early in 2020 with several of its Michelin star restaurants seized by the court mid-dining service. The COVID19 pandemic hit shortly thereafter, leaving Chef Dilling without a restaurant at an uncertain time in the industry and me with little hope of getting to try his food before moving back to the United States. Fast forward a year and a half, Chef Dilling has not yet established a new permanent home but announced a 100-day residency during the summer of 2021 at the Ion Harbour in Malta. Since Malta was already on my list to visit, I enthusiastically made a booking the day they became available and hopped on a plane to Malta a few weeks later.
The most memorable thing about Alex’s food is the sheer amount of technical skill and the precision in which it is applied. I wouldn’t say the flavors are daring but they are extremely well refined and presented in an exciting way with some modern flourishes - think shockingly smooth foie gras parfait enrobed in a truffle gelee, the intricately constructed hunter chicken dish, and much more. The level of quality almost never dipped throughout the meal. Given this was not his normal kitchen team, it was impressive that Chef Dilling and his right-hand man Pierre Minotti were able to pull off such consistent excellence.
In addition to having great technical skills, Chef Dilling is also fanatical about pursuing the best ingredients. Truffles were flown in from Australia instead of using weak summer truffles. Caviar was aged and from N25, one of the best suppliers around. Not everything was from far abroad either. There were Sicilian clams, olive oil from Gozo, and fish caught in the local waters. All of these ingredients were treated carefully to form a tasting menu that was a unique blend of the Chef’s classics with new additions showcasing the Mediterranean climate of his temporary home.
It is worth mentioning, Ion Harbour is the perfect backdrop for a meal -the views are stunning. The restaurant sits on the top floor of the Ion Hotel, right on the water in Valletta overlooking the Grand Harbour with a direct line of sight to Fort St. Angelo. This was up there with Mirazur for best views at a Michelin star restaurant I’ve had. The restaurant’s Michelin bonafides also showed in the staff who were friendly (a real treat after spending two weeks prior with robotic three star servers in Paris) and attentive. Even better, they were surprisingly knowledgeable about the food despite it only being a few weeks into Alex’s residency.
When I visited there were only two options for menus which were the same for lunch and dinner - 5-courses for €110 or 8-courses for €175, both with an optional cheese supplement for €18. Not cheap by any means, but a reasonable value for what was clearly two star cooking (if not pushing on a third) in a lovely setting. You should go for the 8-course menu so you can enjoy the excellent N25 caviar dish (it is on the 5-course menu but with a steep €38 supplement).
What I ate at Alex Dilling @ Ion Harbour
Shortly after sitting down, I was greeted with a number of small amuses which, from left to right, were potato crisps filled with cod roe, a truffled gougère, and a crisp filled with tuna belly. All snacks were at the highest level, really whetting the appetite for the rest of the meal. Not quite as extensive as I’ve seen in the blogosphere from The Greenhouse but wonderful nonetheless.
Bread service was an excellent sourdough that was paired with an addicting dip made from a local cheese called gbejina which was whipped and topped with olive oil from Gozo and a bit of pepper. This was an excellent butter substitute and I greedily enjoyed more than one helping. My only feedback is I think a touch more olive oil relative to the cheese would have been better.
The first course was a strong one, centered around some top-shelf aged N25 caviar paired with marinated pink shrimp, ginger and crème cru. This was a dish that let a handful of pristine ingredients shine with some clever technique to compliment them. The flavor combo was not completely dissimilar to the classic pairing of raw langoustine with caviar, with the pink shrimp being a local stand-in for the langoustine with plenty of natural sweetness. Perhaps the most interesting part of the dish was the jelly made from a reduction of the shrimp shells – the taste of the shells coming through in a nice way, similar to if you are eating a fried shrimp head. Great start to the meal.
As good as the first course was, the next dish of an oyster “bavarois” with oyster vinaigrette may have been even better. A bavarois is a classic Bavarian crème typically found in desserts. Here, Chef Dilling cleverly reimagined it as a savory course by whipping it with some cut oysters (Gilladerau?). This was a nice bit of handywork from the chef, the bavarois lifting the minerality of the oyster up nicely. In less skilled hands, the bavarois could be overpowering but it was smartly balanced out by pearls of dashi and the finely minced chives which you could actually taste (instead of just being a presentational flourish). The dish was rounded out with some puffed rice that added a nice textural contrast. Overall, this was a brilliant dish with my only complaint being they could still do some tweaking on the crème to oyster ratio – two more small chunks of oysters would have gone a long way to making sure the optimal combination of flavors was in each bite. Still, this was the second savory bavarois I have had in as many weeks with the other being a spider crab one at Pierre Gagnaire. I preferred Chef Dilling’s version.
The meal continued with another lightly cooked cold dish (perfect for Malta’s hot climate) of a mackerel escabeche that was paired with ajo blanco, green almond, Sicilian clam. The mackerel here had been cooked for several hours in rice vinegar, giving it an almost pickled taste which worked well with its natural oiliness. The ajo blanco, a traditional Spanish soup that functioned as a sauce for the fish, was good but not great. Not on the menu card but maybe the most important part of the entire dish was basil which really helped lift everything up. My least favorite course of the meal.
The technical prowess of the kitchen was on full display with the next course of foie gras with black truffle and Amalfi lemon jelly. What strikes you first about the dish is the presentation, two smooth, starkly black balls nestled in a bit of jelly flecked with truffle. These balls were filled with foie parfait which had remarkable texture – silky smooth while still being firm enough to hold its shape. On the side was a slice of crispy toast that had been basted with foie gras fat. While basting the toast in foie fat seemed performative (I am smearing foie gras all over it after all), it proved to be a perfectly adequate vehicle to transport the miraculous parfait to my mouth. Top shelf foie dish, just a tad below my favorite of all time (the Ritz London). My only complaint is I could have used more oomph from the Amalfi lemon in the jelly. As an aside, the sommelier knocked it out of the park with his pairing with this course, embracing the strong savory flavors of the dish and going with a bold white wine from Tabarrini Montefalco rather than a more traditional sweet or semi-sweet pairing.
While the first half of the meal generally involved plating prepared ingredients, the kitchen showed they could cook à la minute with the main seafood course - Mediterranean bream stuffed with colonnato lardo and paired with a sauce matelote and ginger foam. Overall, the thing that struck me most about this dish was how well thought out and edited it was. While the bream could be a tad dry, stuffing it with lardo added another dimension of flavor and helped add moisture to the fish. I am a sucker for red wine sauces with white fish so the sauce matelote was right in my wheelhouse. Not quite at the same level of the absolute best red wine fish sauces I have had (Hotel De Ville Crissier or Kong Hans Kaelder) but we are splitting hairs at that point and talking about some of the best sauce work I have ever had. Where Chef Dilling’s dish outshone the aforementioned restaurants was the inclusion of a ginger foam that added a nice refreshing complement to the rich sauce. The amount of ginger in the foam was particularly well-judged, lacking the root’s spiciness while still adding its flavor.
The chef’s eye for presentation is fully on display in his signature dish of “Hunter Chicken” with sauce Albufera and young lettuce. This was the dish I came to Malta to try. There are four distinct layers to the dish. On the innermost part, you have the actual chicken breast, cooked sous vide (if I was to hazard a guess) to give it a consistent moist finish. Next, you have a farce of cep mushrooms (the inner dark layer) which is itself wrapped in a mousseline of chicken and Alsace bacon. Lastly, you have the finishing on the outside. This is a dish that is a marvel to look at, the carefully organized grillmarks and topping of shiso and thyme taking a great amount of skill to arrange. To finish it off you have a decadent Albufera sauce, deeply rich with a bit of foie flavor coming through nicely.
So we have a pretty bird but did it taste any good? For sure. Moist and served with a great rendition of one of my favorite classic sauces, this was a remarkable dish. Does it join the pantheon of my favorite dishes of all time? Not quite. Seasoning seemed somewhat uneven – certain bites packed flavor while others were slightly lacking. It also seemed perfectly constructed to receive a healthy dose of fresh black truffles tableside either as part of the menu or as a supplement. Australian black truffles were in season during my visit and evident in the kitchen so I am not sure why they were not offered as they were a common companion to the Greenhouse version of this dish. Still, these criticisms are holding the dish to the most insane of standards. By any rational critique, it was near perfection.
I added on the optional cheese course which sounded great – Saint Necteraine cheese with a black truffle vinaigrette, fig jelly and ‘truffle salad’. It may have been because I was a tad full at this point, but I found this did not quite live up to its description. Truffle and cheese is always a good combo but I am not sure Saint Necteraine was the best choice of cheese for this (and the portion quite large) as the black truffle flavor did not come through very well. I think I would have preferred a softer cheese with an ample dose of truffle shavings that highlighted the truffle more.
Pre-dessert featured yoghurt with champagne and lemongrass and provided a nice refreshing transition to the pastry section. Particularly impressive was the lemongrass which was well judged to be present without being too sharp. Going with the plating style of ‘put in a bowl and cover it with one component’ was a bit of a letdown after the artistry of the hunter chicken.
The main dessert was Araguani chocolate with sourdough ice cream and caramel. As a rule, I hate chocolate desserts but this did a decent job of converting me to the cult of chocolate. The thing that made the dish hum was the expert use of salt (from nearby Gozo island) to really lift and balance all of the flavors. The last bite was a brown butter financier which was excellent but a tad lonesome as far as petit four’s go given this was a €175 tasting menu. Overall, this was a tasting menu that showed off tremendous skill and a surprising level of consistency given it is only a guest chef series and not Chef Dilling’s full-time restaurant. You owe it to yourself to make it to Malta and give it a try while you still can.