Maltese food, dish by dish

You can read Maltese cooking off a map. Visitmalta calls it rustic and seasonal, shaped by Malta’s closeness to Sicily and North Africa, and UNESCO backs that up with a single word, ftira, which comes from the Arabic fatir. What I like about it is that it doesn’t try to be clever. It’s village food, fishermen’s food and feast-day food.

Where the flavours come from

Visitmalta sums it up as the result of a long relationship between the islanders and the civilisations that ruled the islands. The upshot is thoroughly Mediterranean. Pasta and pastries in the Sicilian tradition, pulses and spices that feel North African, and a fish repertoire that depends on what the boats bring in each week.

If you know southern Italy you’ll feel at home, but the names and combinations are Malta’s own. Kapunata is Malta’s take on ratatouille, according to visitmalta, and timpana wraps macaroni in a meat sauce inside a pastry case.

Which Maltese dishes should you try?

If I could only choose one dish, it would be rabbit. Visitmalta mentions it in all of its food guides, and at family meals it follows the baked pasta, with potatoes and vegetables. I give it a page of its own, on Maltese rabbit stew.

Next come pastizzi, the flaky pastries with a filling of ricotta or mushy peas, which visitmalta recommends hot with wine or coffee, and ftira, the flat sourdough loaf filled with oil, tomato, tuna, capers and olives. Both are covered in my guide to pastizzi.

For a spoon, there’s aljotta, a very garlicky fish soup, and minestra, the thick vegetable soup of winter. For a main, bragioli, which the British would call beef olives, and ross il-forn, baked rice. And to nibble with a glass of wine, what visitmalta calls the village bar spread. Olives, ġbejniet, zalzett (a coriander sausage), galletti crackers and bigilla, a broad bean pâté.

Gozo does it differently

The Ministry for Gozo keeps coming back to three things. First, rabbit, either stewed or fried with garlic, and often brought to the table with spaghetti in its sauce, plus fried rabbit liver as a starter. Second, fish, which it sends you to Xlendi, Marsalforn and Mġarr for, with lampuki from August. Third, the cheeselets, fresh, sun-dried or peppered with salt and a dash of vinegar, sold in supermarkets and by the cheesemakers themselves.

On Gozo the ftira changes shape too. The Ministry describes an open ftira, more like a pie, with potato, onion, capers, olives and anchovies, and another with fresh cheeselets and egg. If you’re in Victoria, I’d order one instead of a sandwich.

A sweet for every feast

This is where Maltese cooking follows the calendar. At Easter, figolli, pastry figures filled with almond. At Christmas, qagħaq tal-għasel, honey rings. At the summer festas, imqaret, date pastries, and qubbajt, the nougat sold from street stalls. UNESCO, which listed the Maltese village festa in 2023, names nougat as the typical festa food.

The rest of the year there are Sicilian-style kannoli and cassata, and helwa tat-Tork, an almond sweet.

How I’d eat well

Two simple rules. Order what the season puts on the table, which in Malta mostly means fish, and be wary of a menu without a single dish from this page. For names and areas, see where to eat in Malta. And to drink with it, local wine and Kinnie have their own page on Kinnie and Cisk.