When I was a mere teen – hey, that’s just a few years ago – I was always a boys’ girl.  Even with my first serious boyfriend - the one I took to my mother’s for my father to practice on - the ‘gang’ consisted of me, him and his seven male friends. They would share more with me than they did with him. I was their Facebook.

At that age, being friends with boys is great because you can flirt but they can’t do anything back, especially if one of their best mates is your boyfriend. Cockteasing is cruel, but hey, what are teenage years without a little fowl play?  It’s not like they ended up shooting up under some bridge as a result. Not all of them anyway.

In my twenties, I was too busy handling my long-term relationships (I seemed to be incapable of having a short term one after First Serious Boyfriend) to even think of friends of any sex. One ‘partner’ in particular was ever so slightly possessive. Being with him entailed forgetting the rest of the world; I was like a cloistered nun, but still dressed like a whore, in lieu of dressing like a matron, which is what he hankered after. Thank goodness I realised there and then that suicide could be slow, and not just painless, and got out.

In my thirties I rediscovered my women friends. They started to come in one by one and I am now so stuck to them that my Gay Best Friend is really, honest to god, jealous. He may be a lot more feminine than they are, but they are actually women, I tell him.  It’s hard to explain.

I can count them on one hand, but boy are they spectacularly fun. They have absolutely nothing to do with my work, with my website, and we do not go out as ‘couples’. Bringing the men into the equation is not just anathema, but a formula for killing the friendship. We talk shoes, philosophy, sex, life, usually within one sentence. And we laugh. A lot. We laugh so much we scream.

We also drink a hell of a lot of wine. And every month or so, we try to meet up and go to lunch. On this island, there is only one place where we feel truly at home, where the food is so secondary to the relaxed, buzzy environment but only so because it will always be good, where – and this is the most important thing – the owner/cook and his waiters flirt outrageously with the female patrons and do it in such a fabulously relaxed way that even the guys don’t mind. That place is Da Pippo.

One of my Mona’s Meals reviews hangs on the wall of Da Pippo, but truly, I’d like to buy my own table because one cannot sit on a wall. During Christmas time, the restaurant had a three-week waiting list going, which I thought was hideously unfair on hard-working out-of-Valletta girls like me who simply did not have time to think of lunch from more than a fortnight prior to getting hungry. I called them so frequently to find a table that they ended up on my speed dial. I probably ended up on their stalker list.

Da Pippo is run by Francesco, known to his friends (me! me!) as Cikk.  Now, how cool is that?  Cikku is cooler than school: he is from Valletta, and therefore, mega cool. What is it about Valletta boys? They’re just a tiny bit hamallu a lot more posh. He actually speaks Maltese; there’s nothing more effete than a grown man who is unable to turn to the vernacular and who is still spewing his mummy’s English. I think that package does it for the ladies.

He really couldn’t give a crap, doesn’t try to suck up to the punters, and that is very attractive, yet at the same time he is always polite but not in a fatuous way. He calls women ‘pupa’ and ‘qalbi’ and not only do they not mind because it does not sound patronising, but they lap it up.

The restaurant is so noisy it is fantastic. There is always a buzz to it and it is always, always packed. If there is a formula for being a good restaurateur, they should bottle it and sell it, and become millionaires.  Oh what the hell – they probably are anyway.

Tongue taken out of cheek and wrapped around the food now: there is no menu. Oh ok, they sometimes bother to write stuff on the board outside. I have no idea why because nobody even takes a look at it.  Maybe it is for people who have never been and who always look really odd on the tables for two at the back of the restaurant: the German and British couples who found a review somewhere while looking for ‘the real thing in Malta’.  It is funny watching them watching the natives, and knowing that the natives, for once, know a lot more than they do.  Da Pippo is as close to ‘at home’ as you will ever feel at a restaurant if you are Maltese, and left out if you are foreign. Half the fun is pointing out the familiar faces. I go there dressed sometimes in McQueen 6 inch heels and sometimes in Uggs, knowing it makes not one blind bit of difference anyway.

Da Pippo’s bills are always the same, no matter what you take. The situation has been like this for years: I reviewed them first around 7 years ago, and regardless of the amount of food you have, every punter pays the same price. Right about now, it is €25.

First up: the absolutely crunchy-outside-soft-as-cotton-inside tiny Maltese hobza (so much more than ‘loaf’ but that’s lost in translation). Forget low-carb or wheat-intolerant: this is the real deal, the kind of stuff you will appreciate hours of pain for. Eat it with the tablespoonfuls of olive oil so fresh, herby and green it feels like washing your mouth with trees.

If you’re lucky and they have them, you will get a really Gozitan peppered gbejna (cheeselet). It is absolutely the best I have ever tasted, with crumbly, soft texture and just the right amount of fire from the king of spice outside. They come with bowls of crushed green and black olives, chopped olives in oil and a couple of slices of fine ham, a parma or a San Daniele.

Whenever you feel like, Cikku (or Cheetah, the guy with the black hair) will plonk himself next to your table, on bended knee (yeah ladies!) and asks you what you want to eat. Usually he just decides for you by offering you just one starter or whatever. I have no idea how he charms his way into this, but I have never managed to say no to the guy. I have had pasta slicked with clams, oil and chilli, served in the traditional metal pan; calves’ liver quickly seared and drizzled in balsamic vinegar and lately, because he said so, we eschewed starters and just went straight to calamari stuffed with rice and seafood in a tomato and fresh seafood sauce. It was so glorious I took The Writer a portion and he was ecstatic and still talking about it the next day.

Cikku’s bisteccha fiorentina, usually beef but sometimes veal according to what he feel like buying, is beautiful. All the meat is. The guy can source. He never asks how I want it because he knows I’m not stupid enough to make him turn it into tanned leather. All the mains come with these beautifully fluffy and violently seared roast potatoes. Sometimes there are grilled peppers, other vegetables or a salad.

Usually, by the time we get to desserts, completely sozzled from a bottle of wine, he has run out. This is probably the only restaurant on the island which does not store anything overnight because it has sold absolutely everything.  So he brings over these mignon of cannoli or cassatella. These days, I order dessert right at the start and I have had the most sublime and tit-wobbly pannacotta, chocolate biscuit oozing (ahem) chocolate and a cooked ricotta cheesecake which I felt was slightly dry but which everybody else adores.

Our lunches at Da Pippo – and it only opens for lunch – usually last until 4.30pm.  Sometimes Cikku will come and say ‘I have a bottle of vintage rose champagne. What do you think?’ and of course we scream ‘yes’: the joys of having thirties liquidity with twenty-year old fun-loving attitude is just perfect. We continue to drink limoncello and Averna until our livers collapse and we quite literally cannot take it anymore. At this point his friend with the posh huge Merc SLK (‘the only one on the island!’ ‘I have had many other celebrities in this car!’) has to be called to take the ladies home safely.

Da Pippo is not precious about the kind of food it serves. It does not change its menu seasonally but goes with whatever it finds. It’s not posh but it’s very, very charming in a completely down-to-earth way. The food comes from the heart and you can smell it and feel it. The ambience is noisy and wild and there are way too many lawyers pretending to be working packing the tables. It is extremely déclassé and thank goodness even a woman in a full-blown Burberry check shirt manages to blend into the background.

As such the restaurant is more Maltese than any other restaurant on the island. I feel so comfortable there that they usually have to peel me off the chair to get me out. I absolutely, without reservation, adore it.