Malta: Eating and Drinking

Searching Out the Food and Drink that Makes Malta Special

Malta

We spent a week in Malta, nowhere near long enough to become experts on Maltese cuisine, but time enough to eat in several cafés and restaurants, and peruse the menus of many more. We were not interested in the myriad bars hawking Aperol spritz – two for the price of one during certain hours - not just because Aperol is not our drink, but because such bars can be found anywhere from Liverpool to Ljubljana. We were, though, interested to discover that every Maltese restaurant has rabbit on the menu. Now, that makes Malta special.

Meat

Rabbit

Rabbit is so popular in Malta that almost every restaurant heads its ‘meat mains’ with ‘Maltese Rabbit Stew.’ It is an ordinary sort of stew with onions, garlic, red wine, tomato, nutmeg, various herbs and chopped vegetables, but none the worse for that. Lynne enjoyed hers, she always likes a rabbit, though lurking in the depths was a big block of offal; kidneys, liver and other organs. We generally both enjoy liver and kidney, but rabbit’s offal has a strong, rather rank flavour which she found disagreeable.

Maltese Rabbit Stew

The Maltese used to hunt rabbit, but loss of habitat and over-exploitation have reduced the wild population so hunting is now strictly controlled. Most rabbits on Valetta’s menus are locally farmed.

Pulled Rabbit Rigatoni

When it was my turn for rabbit, I chose pulled rabbit rigatoni. Maltese food is heavily influenced by their neighbours across the sea to the north, and every menu offers a multitude of pasta dishes. The rabbit had been so assiduously shredded that almost became part of the sauce, but I enjoyed the full rich flavour and the fresh, al dente pasta.

Veal

Veal virtually disappeared in the UK over 20 years ago over justified animal welfare concerns. The EU has introduced strict regulation since then, the notorious ‘veal crates’ have been banned and welfare standards raised considerably. On that basis I decided that while Lynne ate her rabbit, I would indulge in the unaccustomed pleasure of veal. And a fine piece of meat it was, luxuriating in its lemony sauce.

Veal with a Lemon Sauce

I had some qualms, not everything is perfect in the European veal industry, but I do not accept the still surprisingly prevalent British view that ‘all foreigners are beastly to animals, cos,… well ...they're foreign, aren’t they?’

Wild Boar

Although not native to Malta wild boar were introduced in ancient times for hunting, and thrived. They continue to thrive despite the loss of habitat. They are a nuisance to farmers and a nuisance when they charge down the streets of small towns. The herd is managed and licences are issued to cull the excess.

Wild boar stew

Some wild boar is game-y, some less so. This example, stewed in red wine and surrounded by puréed cauliflower was of the game-y variety. Well-cooked and tender, I enjoyed it very much.

Most restaurants will offer steak, too, if you want to spend money, but lamb and pork exercise menu writers far less. Even chicken only puts in an occasional appearance.

Fish and Sea Food

For an island nation, the Maltese do not seem that interested in fish. Occasionally dourada or swordfish appear on menus, but the ever-presents are sea food such as prawns, lobsters. mussels, octopus and squid. Prawns and lobsters are largely corralled in the starters section, where we no longer go as we cannot eat a starter and a main course (one of the joys of getting older!) or among the pastas.

My friend Brian suggested I should try sea urchin with pasta, as he had been amazed that they bothered to collect and then cook anything so insubstantial with so little flavour. I would have given them a go, but found they are only available September to March and we visited in April.

Mussels

Mussels are much more familiar and, as elsewhere, can be starters or a main course depending on portion size.

Mussels

Lynne enjoyed these moules marinière which we extremely large and fleshy. They came with the inevitable frites.

Squid

Squid is always popular and the usual Maltese way with is to slice up small squid and fry them in tempura batter.

Battered squid, Marsaxlokk

Lynne ate her squid on the dock at Marsaxlokk. It was fine, she said, but there was just too much of it.

Octopus

Octopus with Garlic is the Rabbit Stew of the sea, i.e. it is on every menu and usually right at the top. We both tried it, Lynne in Valletta, me in Marsaxlokk.

Garlic Octopus, Marsaxlokk

We both thought the garlic could have been more assertive and although I would not want rubbery octopus, I would have preferred a little more texture. I suppose the quantity of garlic and precise duration of cooking are matters of personal preference, there is no one ‘correct’ way to cook an octopus (though of course, I am right).

Desserts

I have admitted that we cannot manage starters any more, sadly the same is often true of desserts. But here are a couple we enjoyed.

Halva Ice Cream

Halva was not much in evidence anywhere else, but it did turn up in an ice-cream. Densely textured and very sweet, it was sumptuous rather than subtle.

Halva ice cream

Imqaret

A traditional Maltese dessert of spiced date paste, in a triangular pastry case, deep fried and sprinkled with chopped nuts.

Imqaret

There are more traditional Maltese desserts and I would happily do further research on this subject.

Snacks and Light Lunches

Pastizzi, Ftira and Arancini

(Thanks to Wilson and Norma without whose advice we might easily have missed pastizzi completely.) A pastizz is a traditional savoury made by folding filo or puff pastry round ricotta cheese or curried peas.

Two pastizzi, one peas, one cheese

The ricotta version is excellent, but the real star for me were pea pastizzi. Dried green split peas are boiled almost to a mush with a little onion, garlic and mild curry powder, enfolded in pastry and baked. From such simple ingredients comes one of the world’s finest lunchtime snacks. They are extraordinarily popular throughout Malta, costing €1 each in Valletta or €0.60 on Gozo.

Ftira is a small ring-shaped bread, but in a café ‘ftira’ means such a bread filled with tuna (in our case) or sardine, tomato and more. Given the quality of Maltese bread, ftira are predictably, a delight.

Arancini at the front, ftira on the plate behind

Arancini, as the name implies, are Italian (specifically Sicilian) but are widely available in Malta. They consist of a filling, we chose ham and cheese, inserted into a ball of rice which is breadcrumbed and deep fried.

Ham and cheese arancini

It looks good, but was the least interesting of these three, perhaps because of our choice of filling; wet cured ham and ricotta cheese hardly pack a flavour punch.

A Salad

Cafés are not abundant in the citadel of Victoria, the unofficial capital of the island of Gozo. 21st century commercialism would jar against the old stones, though doubtless there was plenty of crude commercialism in the citadel’s heyday. There are, though, a couple of restaurants, and we found our way to one - via two flights of stone stairs and a circular staircase – and ordered a sharing salad.

A sizeable platter of cheese, tomatoes, onions, olives and capers soon arrived. It looked impressive, and once we had poured olive oil all over it, it tasted wonderful. The salad, though, raises two issues not covered hitherto, bread and cheese.

Sharing salad, Gozo

Bread

Maltese bread, with a crisp crust and firm interior, was uniformly excellent and may be the best bread we have encountered. French baguettes are superb – or were before they started adding preservatives to make it last longer – the black breads of the Baltic states, spread with garlic butter, bring back fond memories, but neither quite match the Maltese. It is not only excellent, but versatile - it even toasts well.

Cheese

Malta has few cows – they need too much space – so most cheese, including that in our salad, is made from sheep’s milk. Some of the cheeselets can be seen to be covered in something dark. These are speciality known as gbejniet tal-bzar – cheese rolled in crushed black peppercorns and matured for few days. We bought some earlier to try at home.

Gbejbiet tal-bzar

I thought the cheese was better without the pepper, others may disagree.

Drinking

Wine

Palatino Merlot

We drank Maltese wines almost exclusively. Most Valletta restaurants provide a short list of wines at €22 - €28 (they retail at €7 - €9) covering the usual grape varieties.  Quality wines are designated DOK (Denominazzjoni ta' l-Oriġini Kontrollata) Malta or Gozo depending on origin. Most lists also offer a selection of more expensive cuvées but we did not venture there.

Ulysses Shiraz

The Palatino Merlot, was a soft fruity wine, easy drinking and very pleasant, but their Sauvignon Blanc was a little disappointing, falling uncomfortably between the New Zealand and French styles. We drank the Sauvignon Blanc with lunch by the harbour in the seaside village of Marsaxlokk where our disappointment was eased by prices dropping from the Valletta range to a pleasing €12 - €15.

Marsovin’s Caravaggio Chenin Blanc, unlike Caravaggio himself, was too well-mannered and could have been spikier. Their Ulysses Shiraz (POK Gozo) was excellent. Rich with tannins it was well armed to take on my wild boar.

Beer

The most drunk beer in Malta is Cisk, which can be see in several of the ‘light lunch’ photos above. It was not a beer I enjoyed much, being somewhat short of flavour and not particularly refreshing, but it was cheap. The same brewery (Farsons) produces Hopleaf Pale Ale which has more flavour and a pleasant bitterness. There are also several craft beers which could be explored.

And Finally...

A Michelin Starred Pig’s Ear

The day we travelled to Malta, we were up at 2.30, caught a plane from Manchester at 7.00 and arrived in Malta on time at 11.30 (with a +1 hour time change). After a little difficulty first locating our prebooked complimentary taxi, and then our apartment block (we had been given the wrong address) we were dropped off at 12.30. There was no reception and no way to get in until we were provided  with the key codes, promised between 2.00 and 3.00.

Tired, hungry and thirsty we dragged our suitcase to Market Street which, our homework had suggested, would be full of restaurants. It was indeed, the pedestrianised street had covered decks by the roadside at the bottom end and further up a line of plastic ’tents’ down the centre.

We reached the first deck, saw the word ‘snack’ on the menu outside, climbed aboard and sat down. We made our choices, turned over the menu and saw the €125 set menu with a flight of matched wines costing much the same. We had apparently strayed into Michelin star territory while in search of a lunchtime snack. Never mind, an obliging young man took our order for a sharing plate of Serrano ham, a bottle each of Sarson’s Hopleaf Pale Ale, a big bottle of water and two pig’s ears.

We waited some time, but eventually our beers arrive, as did the water (which had becoming increasingly important) and the bread and olive oil without which no Maltese meal can start.

A further wait ensued before the ham arrived. In Michelin star style it arrived, not alone but with a bowl of olives and a little offering of fishy paté.

Serrano Ham, Bread and Olives, Grain Street, Valletta

After some pleasant nibbling we were starting to feel better physically, but time had moved on and neither our key codes had arrived, nor our pig’s ears.

Years ago, I would regularly enjoy a day’s walking with Brian, Francis, Mike and whoever else was available. Brian would always turn up with a greasy paper bag containing two deep fried pig’s ears he had bought at the dog food stall in Stafford market. He threw them to the fittest and most eager member of our group, Francis’ dog Dino, who crunched them up with relish.

I have eaten pig’s ears myself (as has Brian) not from the dog food counter but in restaurants in Portugal. We agree that there is a porblem with them; inside every bite there is a strip of cartilage, just like there is in our own ears, and it is not pleasant. So why had I ordered them? Bravado? Stupidity? I don't know.

Michelin stars are not handed out for nothing and we were at Grain Street, one of Malta's three such restaurants. The pig’s ears that finally arrived were sweet and porky, the blobs of tarragon infused mayonnaise a lovely accompaniment. And the cartilage? I do not know where it went, but I found myself pondering whether it had removed by butchery, cookery or wizardry.

Pig's Ear, Grain Street, Valletta

I should have ordered one between us, but we finished the two and felt replete. But 3 o’clock had passed and we still had no key codes. I called our contact number and found the phone switched off, a second number went to voicemail and I left an anxious message. We wondered what we should do if we had been scammed (despite using a major booking company) and there was no apartment. Then my phone rang, there was no apology, but the promise of an immediate Whats Ap message, and a few minutes later our problems were over.

Pressure off, we were able to acknowledge how much we had enjoyed our Michelin starred snack. It cost a lot for  a snack, but it served as our main meal for the day, making it a bargain. We picked up some bread, salami and a bottle of wine in a convenience store, found our apartment and relaxed after a long and occasionally stressful day.

In Conclusion

Malta produces, meat and seafood dishes, pastries, salads, desserts and wines of high quality. Enjoy them. If, however, you don’t like their food, no worries, you can exist on pizzas and burgers….

…but, if that is how you feel, why not consider staying at home. Malta, like Venice, Amsterdam, the Canaries and others is struggling under the pressure of too many tourists.