| Why should I visit the Maltese Islands? | Why Gozo? | Why stay at the Mariblu Guesthouse? | How do I Get there? |

The Maltese islands are rich in history, culture and our hospitality will make you want to get involved and learn more about our way of life, and to get to know what kind of food we offer and how it is cooked.

A week’s holiday will consist of various excursions to historical places, walks through the country side and time to enjoy our beaches as well.

Accommodation will be in our house where you will stay on half pension, (breakfast and dinner)  so that every evening, you enjoy a real good dinner consisting of the traditional dishes.  Maria starts her day with shopping for the freshest products and would also be glad to show you how it is cooked.  She will also be glad to give you some of her recepies which she learned from her ancestors.  Her main ingredient is her great love for cooking and this is what makes her food really good and genuine.

For many, a good holiday is as good as the food is, and there is nothing better than trying different food when you are on holiday in different parts of the world.  What is the fun in having the same fillet that you normally have at home or the usual type of food, even though there is no doubt about how good it is?   A variety of cooking specialities and a selection of exquisite and typical meals of the place you are visiting  can really make a difference. On tasting  the local food with  its typical local ingredients and cooking traditions, one really learns more and gets to know better  the country visited and its people.

The South Mediterranean diet is well known for its healthiness and many are turning back to this healthy diet consisting of daily fresh products.  It is enough to say that a loaf of bread is not considered fresh unless it is still hot from the bakery!  Fresh vegetables means being picked the same morning!  The local butcher opens on certain days only following the day of fresh meat supply.  One has to understand that this is the result of the fact the refrigerators were not available on the islands until the early fifties.  The first ones were the ones that worked by paraffin as electricity supply was not exisiting in the rural villages.  Up to this time, the street lamps were still oil lamps lit every night by the lamp lighter who rode through the village on his bicycle pulling the ladders behind.  That is why fresh means “of the same day”.  

To describe the Gastronomic Heritage of the Maltese Islands, one needs to understand the social as well as the cultural influences which afftected this trend.  The islands were ruled by all the powers of the Mediterranean and naturally all left some impact on our type of diet based on local fish, meat and vegetable from the south Mediterranean region.

Many people are surely familiar with  food which have become internationally popular,  such as Thai, Chinese, Turkish, Italian, Sicilian and in our case TRADITIONAL MALTESE FOOD.

Maltese local food needs a lot of preparation and slow cooking and that is the main reason why it is not so easy to find in most restaurants.  This kind of food needs to be ordered before, unlike the “A La Carte Menu”. Since  a lot of vegetables and aromatic herbs are used in the process, these all need to be freshly picked, as otherwise the aroma and taste would be largely affected.  The long cooking process is needed so that the aromatic herbs will integrate their tastes and smells into the food.

For this reason, every morning, we offer a specific menu for dinner, consisting of Traditional Local Cooking. We usually  take the order for the same evening at breakfast time.  The daily menu consists of a 3 course dinner including a starter, a main course and a dessert.

This allows Maria to shop for daily fresh products and cook the particular specialities at her own pace, so that by the evening the food is ready to be served.  This is the ideal way to have the real local cuisine - the slower the food is cooked,  the better and more tasty is the result.  Look out for some of our typical dishes.

For those who like to see how these products are grown, we can organise visits to local farmers who will take us to their fields and farms.  As for fish, we can also organise a day’s fishing trip with a local fisherman on his traditional small fishing boat.  The eye of Osiris on his fishing boat will keep any harm away from you and I can assure you that having such an unusual holiday with us will make you go back in time and enjoy the beauty and bounty of our islands.