Today we decided to celebrate my dad’s 73rd birthday early by taking him to a Maltese pub/restaurant on the Isle of Dogs. We decided to take him about two weeks ago so I had two weeks of him banging on about it and getting more and more excited about going out.
It is called Mourinho’s and is situated just off Manchester Road on the corner of a street called Pier street, the pub used to be called The Pier Tavern until about a month ago. When we got there we were a bit alarmed to see no “grey pub” and just a building site. My sisters and their brood turned up 30 minutes later and informed us that there was another part of Pier Street a minute down the road which is where the pub was.
The inside looks like your typical pub that has decided to focus on promoting the food more than the drinks, I’m afraid I wasn’t able to take any pictures of the inside as the people in the pub were a bit annoyed at this and looking on Google just brought up loads of pictures of Jose Mourinho.
Despite booking a section of the pub two weeks ago, and telling them that one of our party was in a wheel chair, we discovered they had reserved a section of the venue that had some pretty high steps. We were forced to go and sit in the beer garden – thankfully it was a nice sunny day.
We ordered a round of drinks and were quite shocked when the bill came to just under £50. We were even more shocked to discover that a small bottle of coke (smaller than a can of coke) cost £5.00! Four cokes at £5.00 each, a vodka & coke that cost nearly £8.00 (they had used a £5.00 bottle), a glass of wine, two pints of bitter and a pint of Fosters.
It was actually cheaper to by the four kids a pint of beer each than a small bottle of coke!
After the drinks my sisters decided to examine the menu to see what the cheapest food they could have was, my dad said don’t worry about that as he was flush and would pay for it so me and my sisters ordered a Maltese Burger which came with a side order of chips, I thought it was a bit pricey at £15.00.
The Maltese Burger is not just a burger in a bun, they place cheese, a fried egg and bacon into the bun as well and garnish with salad.
My main concern was how do I tackle this massive thing without getting it all down me? I was handed a knife and fork but I will be damned if I am going to eat a burger with cutlery, I did cheat a little – I cut the burger in half and then ate it with my hands.
My dad and Ian (one of my sister’s boyfriends) had Timpana which is baked macaroni Maltese style which was a little bit more expensive at £16 a plate and the portion was smaller than what we had.
Although the prices were high (yes, I’m mentioning that AGAIN) the service was pretty fast, actually the burger was so fast in coming that I checked to make sure it had been cooked properly.
After the food it was time to bring out the birthday cake.
He had a really good time and Mourinho’s is definitely a place I’d be interested in visiting again, I might just have to save up a bit first. 🙂