Last week I had a meeting with a colleague in a coffee shop in Valletta. We ordered two vanilla milkshakes. What the waitress delivered were two tall glasses of sweet milk with no ice cream at the bottom and a few apologetic bubbles on top trying to pass themselves off as real cream. The bill: Lm1.80.

Last month I went to a restaurant for lunch, also in Valletta. Two of us ordered what was billed as Italian antipasti misti for two. The plate that was laid on the table would have sent any Italian worth his olive oil bolting out of the restaurant to topple his government.

The so-called antipasti misti consisted of a few thin slices of spicy and plain salami, 11 barely oiled olives and a crumbled, 3cm in diameter mound of parmesan cheese fresh out of its supermarket wrapping. A handful, literally, of strangely small dried tomatoes was scattered around the plate. Their strategic positioning was meant to give us, the hungry patrons, the optical illusion of seeing more of them than there actally were. Off a grocer's shelf, the entire contents of the plate would have cost no more than around 60c. The restaurant price: Lm4.25.

Two friends of mine went to an upmarket restaurant in Paceville. The food was very good and the ambience elegant as was the service They had some nibble food for starters, local fish, a bottle of local wine and a bottle of still water. The bill: Lm57. The fish for two alone had a price tag of Lm26. Remember this is Paceville, not Paris.

Two weeks ago, I was pushing a trolley at a wine shop, stocking up on a variety of wines, mostly for everyday consumption. I picked up six bottles of very average and undistinguished Australian Chardonnay at Lm2.95 each. Two days later, I had a glass of the same wine at a bar in Valletta for the same price.

Let's face it, there is something terribly wrong going on here. A restaurateur is in business like everyone else. He has a right to maximise his or her profits if that is what the market is beckoning him to do. Yet what is happening here is not that. Our bars and restaurants seem to be picking prices out of a hat, as if what they charge does not need to bear any rational relation to what they deliver. And they think that their establishments are a stone’s throw away from the Arc de Triomphe, Piccadilly Circus or Via Condotti.

I do not mind paying a handsome sum of money for an exceptional meal. I don’t even care if the restaurateur takes a small advantage of me because he is confident that I will value his pappardelle con sugo di coniglio in my mouth more than the Lm5 in my pocket. But there is a difference between high prices and highway robbery.

My hunch is that what is

happening here is typically Maltese. Restaurateurs use envy rather than market forces as the basis for determining their price scales. The bulk of run of the mill Maltese restaurants seem to set their prices by pegging them as close as they possibly can to those of upmarket ones - independently of the difference in the level of their cuisine, ambience, location and service. This is insane economics, unmistakably Maltese. The ‘principle’ is this: dak x'ghandu ahjar minni...mela x'naghmel ma' nhallihx li dak il-kiesah jaqla' iktar.

Maltese restaurant owners should stop thinking that they are a democracy, each of them having an equal right to charge the same or almost the same prices, regardless of the quality of their fare, service and ambience.

Ah yes, service, one of the two Cinderellas of the Maltese catering and hospitality industry. The notion that basic and courteous service should be delivered by all establishments, regardless of price, is still not a cornerstone of this industry. Even less so is the idea that quality should increase with the prices charged. Somehow you get the feeling that most, not all, waiters and waitresses in Malta believe that taking good care of their patrons, giving an extra smile, makes them servile.

Ambience is the second Cinderella. Admittedly, it has improved across the board over the last couple of decades, and so has the quality of the food. Yet again, however, we have gone overboard. Just because a bar has its walls stripped down to limestone, is furnished with off the shelf replicas of Maltese farmhouse furniture, plonks bits and bobs of New Agey decorations here and there and plays Brazilian muzak in the background does not give it a licence to charge Lm2.95 for a glass of wine that costs a fraction of this amount.

Finally, a small confession. One of my most enjoyable outings recently was at a bar in, of all places, downtown Pieta. It’s a typically Maltese working men's dive. The bar owner’s dress code is hot pants and a sleeveless T-shirt stretching over his potbelly And from what I could tell, his customers obey the same dress code. The décor is hilariously kitsch: a concoction of Greco-Roman motifs, sinking under waves of pastel colours, surrounds regulation faux colonial furniture. The cutlery and crockery is a tal-lira showroom. You get the drift.

But I tell you, having a cold beer at this Pieta’ joint makes more culinary and financial sense than anywhere I have been to for a long time. I was there with two friends of mine late one night and we drank six beers between us. To accompany the beers, the following plates were put before us: fried rice, baked potatoes, pork cutlets, bread with tomato paste and olive oil, beans, barbequed chicken wings, lasagne, Maltese crackers, peanuts and olives. The bill for six beers and the food: Lm2.40. This bar owner should become a consultant to the Malta Hotels & Restaurants Association.

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