Maltese vs Cypriot food & cuisine

Maltese food focuses on fresh seafood, seasonal vegetables, olives, capers, citrus, herbs, good bread, and practical meats. The cooking is simple and honest, with flavors shaped directly by the land and sea.

What makes it stand out in a global contex is that you get touches of Sicily, North Africa, and the broader Mediterranean, yet it still feels distinctly local. Dishes are more rustic than refined, built from everyday ingredients, slow cooking, and clever preservation.

Cyprus shares many flavors with its neighbors, but its cuisine has a character of its own. Meals often revolve around meze, small dishes served all at once, fresh local ingredients, plenty of mint and olive oil, and a fondness for slow-cooked food. Bread, sausages, and halloumi cheese show up everywhere, from breakfast to dinner.

Bread and pasta are supreme among grain foods in Malta. Ħobz, a crusty loaf available in white or brown varieties, accompanies meals for soaking up olive oil or sauces. Pastizzi — flaky pastries filled with ricotta cheese or mushy peas- are everyday street food. The strong Sicilian culinary heritage is evident in plenty of pastas  –  penne, rigatoni, and macaroni paired with tomato or pesto sauces. Unlike bread and pasta, corn and rice are relatively minor in traditional cooking.

Wheat dominates, as it does across the Mediterranean, but Cyprus uses a wider mix of grains, including barley, corn, and rice. Wheat remains essential for pita, a thick, oval, oven-baked bread eaten daily.

Vegetables play a bigger role in Maltese cooking than many people expect. Simply grilled, roasted, or steamed vegetables are common. Salad is dominated by tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, bell peppers, and capers; olives also find their way into salads for a salty and briny flavor.

Dishes often center around vegetable in minestra (a hearty vegetable soup), kapunata (a cooked vegetable dish with eggplant, tomatoes and capers), bean stews, and vegetable pies.

Cypriot cooking leans heavily on vegetables, but meat, dairy, and grains often balance or even outweigh them. Vegetables show up in salads, stews, and alongside grilled foods, usually dressed with lemon and olive oil. A typical summer salad mixes celery leaves and stalks, parsley, coriander, tomatoes, and cucumber. Purslane and wild dandelion greens are also popular.

Maltese cuisine is balanced around traditional meats – beef, pork and poultry consumption is very similar. Rabbit evolved from a historical staple for the poor into a national meat, famously prepared as stuffat tal-fenek (Maltese rabbit stew), a rich, slow-cooked dish with wine, tomatoes, garlic, and herbs.

Livestock farming has long shaped Cypriot agriculture and diet. Many villages lie inland, sometimes far from the coast, and this distance from the sea historically tied people to animal husbandry. Pork became the dominant meat, prepared through charcoal grilling, sausages, and preservation with smoke and wine. Red wine, in fact, defines much of the island’s charcuterie.

The quality and variety the fish and seafood in Malta is outstanding. People rely on the daily catch, dishes feature seasonal lampuki (mahi-mahi or dorado), octopus, swordfish, and small coastal fish. To flavor, cooks use tomatoes, olives, capers, garlic, herbs and good olive oil.

As for the island on the Mediterranean Sea, the traditional cuisine must include seafood – and it does. Locals grill octopus, squid, sea bream, and red mullet, then finish them with lemon and sea salt. Grilling is common, though locals also prepare seafood soups and stews. Cypriot meze is often ocean-focused, offering fish roe salad, squid, and small fried fish.

Milk consumption numbers bounce around from year to year, but overall consumption stays pretty high. Ricotta appears everywhere, British cheddar is popular along local gbejna, small round cheeses made from sheep’s or goat’s milk. Traditional soups often get enriched with eggs and a chunk of gbejna melting into the broth. For breakfast, people reach for plain yogurt, sometimes drizzled with honey or mixed with fresh fruit.

Milk and dairy play an important role in Cypriot cooking. It’s striking that such a small island produced a cheese as widely known as halloumi. This semi-hard, unripened, brined cheese, from goat’s and sheep’s milk, has been part of local life for centuries.  Anari is another key cheese. Soft and similar to ricotta, it works in both savory and sweet dishes and is often served with honey. Yogurt is a staple, used in cooking and served alongside rich meats.

The numbers tell a pretty clear story: Malta consumes more sugar and sweeteners than almost anywhere else in Europe. A big chunk of that comes from soft drinks. In fact, Malta ranks second in per capita soft drink consumption, which explains a lot about where all that sugar is going.

Olive oil is a primary source of fat for salads, grilled veggies, meats, and bread dippings. Some seed oils are also used, like sunflower oil, but to a lesser extent.

Many Cypriot desserts rely on semolina or flour, sugar or honey, almonds, walnuts, sometimes fruit, rose-water, or mastic. These give sweets a warm, aromatic,  nutty or floral flavour — not overly rich, but comforting. You’ll find desserts that are crunchy outside and soft inside, flaky and nutty, dense and chewy, or silky and light.