A Taste of Malta

It’s our first day in Valletta, we have just shared our first impressions about the city at Malta University, it’s lunch time and we all seem hungry, at least I know I am. As a group of a few students, we remember a small food shop that caught our eye on our way to the Malta University Campus. I still wonder why we noticed it. Was it the smell? Was it how it looked? Was it the light shining from the food shack? Was it the price (0,40 cents per pastizzi)? Was it the chalk boards signalling that the food here was Maltese, or maybe ‘authentically Maltese’ by combining the word ‘Malta’ and ‘Pastizzi’ alongside a Knight and the Maltese cross (see image below)? Looking back I would like to say that it was the smell of the food. But rather I think that it had more to do with the ‘authenticity’ of the food, as we were tourists wanting to discover traditional Maltese culture. But I shall never really know was drew us to this small counter full of savoury pastries hidden under a dark retractable canopy. I ended up eating 3 pasties throughout our first day in Valletta and wondered: What is pastizzi, how do we eat it, and what are the requirements for pastizzi to be ‘real’ or to taste good? 

As I try to understand why we were drawn to pastizzis, I remember Jamaica Kincaid’s ‘A Small Place’ (1) mentions ‘When you sit to eat your delicious meal, it’s better that you don’t know that most of what you are eating came off a plane from Miami. And before it got on a plane in Miami, who knows where it came from?’ In 2016, food imports constituted of over 10% of Malta’s imports including, seafood, meat, wines and spirits, vegetables, cereals, and dairy products (2). And other larger exports being oil, transportation (floating structures, aircrafts, vehicles). With 20% of imports from Italy, and various other European countries as well as Canada and the USA, to what extent is this food Maltese? Additionally, Marjan Moris, a researcher from the Gozo anthropology field school mentions the turk origins of pastizzi (3). As Malta has been consistently occupied by other cultures, Turks, French, Italian, British, what is then Maltese? And how does something somewhat postcolonial become Maltese? Malta exemplifies how the colonial becomes the local and blurs the divide and boarder between the two.  

We struggle to find the shack after being on Campus, confusion reigns as our eyes scramble around looking in different directions for the food that had caught our attention. We eventually realise that it is only 20 meters away on the same street. One by one we decide to order a ricotta pastizzi and one by one we get a paper bag covered by a napkin in which we can find our own pastizzi. And as such, our first taste of traditional Maltese pastries, and the way of eating that goes with it. We stand and wonder around in a five meter radius from each other as we eat and withstand all talking in favour of the tastes we experience. An older man, alone, is standing by the counter and eating his pastizzi whilst leaning on a high table. He seems to be tranquil as he eats in silence in the warm air but covered by shade. He demonstrates a way of eating in Valletta as people remain outside whilst they eat with sun beams shooting on them on their arms and shade covering their faces. Later on during the day, we visit the new food court called Is-Suq tal-Belt that opened in Valletta in January 2018, seemingly at the occasion of the V18. The entrance is dark, and the inside remains dark but open. It is hard to see the different food stands that are present but the centre of the space is full of tables and seats and a bar in the centre. Inside, we see another pastizziera but we have just eaten and are not tempted by it. We talk to one of the men working in the food court and standing in the centre of the space. He is from Montenegro but moved to Malta a year ago, and will be moving away in a year due to the boring repetitive nature of life on the island. He expresses his discontent with the food court because nobody stays inside. The outside terrace of the food court is empty as well. The cafes outside in the pedestrian street seem more successful, as they remain open throughout the day and there constantly seems to be somebody eating, these are situated next to our pastizzi shop. The liveliness of the streets and the shops sets them apart from the emptiness and darkness of the food court.

The women at the counter in the pedestrian street where we did buy pasties is a Maltese from Toronto. Her grand father was the first man to make pastizzi in Toronto. She has his secret recipe for pastizzi and makes them fresh every morning. Around two o’clock, she closes because she sells out of all of her pastizzis and other snacks. She emphasises the importance of them being fresh and criticizes other pastizzerias that do not make them fresh everyday; “be careful to buy them in places where they are made fresh. A lot of people just reheat them around here”. She continues to claim to have ‘the’ recipe for pastizzis, passed down by her grandfather. On our second day in Gozo, I ask a South African woman working in a store on Saint George’s piazza directs me to a pastizzeria to find the best pastizzis. She explains that the reason why these pastizzis are the best is that the owners make them fresh everyday and keep on making them throughout the day in order to provide fresh homemade pastizzis. 

So, what is a Maltese pastizzi? With ingredients from around Europe, a recipe from Toronto passed on throughout generations, pastizzis display the melting pot of cultures that constitute Maltese culture and traditions. As a snack to eat standing in the warm and shaded streets of Valletta exemplifies contributes to the liveliness of the streets and people of Malta. And what is the best pastizzi? The importance seems to lie in their freshness and homemade-ness. Cautiously, my search for ‘real’ or fresh and homemade pastizzi continues as we move around Valletta and around the Maltese archipelago as I explore the tastes of Malta and learn more about the people and the culture present on the islands. 

1. Kincaid, J. (1998). A Small Place.
2. https://tradingeconomics.com/malta/food-imports-percent-of-merchandise-imports-wb-data.html 
3. Moris, M. (2008). Tourism, culture and food: Pastizzerias as a site for cultural brokerage. Omertaa Journal for Applied Anthropology, 219-227. http://www.omertaa.org/archive/ omertaa0029.pdf