A visit to the Mediterranean Food Festival at the Eden Arena rolls a good evening out into one – great and varied food, wine and a bit of education to go with it.

This festival started out as a very non-descript affair – one of those silly little fairs that we used to organise, literally for the sake of it.

Yet, year after year, it has improved. This year, although the number of exhibitors seems to be lower than last year – it looks fantastic. The Eden Arena has been reshaped into a replica of Mdina – well maybe not a replica, but it’s close enough to see what it is mimicking.

Each and every stall – whether it be honey, wine, paella, Cypriot food, Maltese bread or oil – is set into a replica of a small period house. It truly is well laid out and participation from exhibitors, although as mentioned down on last year, is still more than adequate.

There is an exhibition of how salt is mined or farmed, with particular reference to how it has been done over the centuries. There is a beer garden and there are even traditional Maltese nougat stands, wedding cakes and the most amazing fat and lard sculptures one could hope for.

The array of food on offer is phenomenal. The Maltese contingent have done the country proud – the fruit and “veg” stands offer the most magnificent specimens one could hope to see – full ripe red tomatoes, leeks, broccoli and all manner of other greens.

The olive oil stand once again proved to be a hit from the word go with the majority of Maltese heading straight for it – freshly pressed and full of flavour. One Italian exhibitor got caught up in all the curiosity and tried some. He said that the oil was different to anything he had ever tasted before.

So, what can be suggested to make it more successful? Well for starters, although there were many traditional Maltese foods, pastizzi (cheescakes) and mqaret (date slices) were nowhere to be seen. True, they might not be the healthiest thing in the world, but they are Maltese and they are unique, so why aren’t there any on sale.

Second, such a festival should be held again in summer, maybe even more than once, and to capture the true spirit of the Mediterranean, it should be held by the sea, al fresco and at night – what could capture the event in it’s entirety better than that? Mdina, rather than a fake set, is also an option.

Another thing to be noted is that the prices to buy certain types of food are rather steep – tourists might consider buying as they do tend to spend more money, but some of the prices are far to steep for your average family. Fine, the point of the event is more on of promotion of the delights that are to be found in Malta, but a well-attended event will always generate even more patronage.

Another point which must be raised is that there are so many weird and wonderful foods that even we Maltese hardly know about (or have forgotten about), such as home made carob syrup, the different types of honey and breads. But the one thing that really stood out was a Gozitan stand that had all sorts of mushrooms (the ones we assume must be imported), which are grown in Malta and Gozo. Granted, these foods are available in shops, but do they get the exposure? Do people know that they exist? We are trying to get the people of Malta to enjoy a health Mediterranean diet, like our Italian neighbours, but if people do not know that they can buy readily available products such as these, we need to stimulate an interest. There was a hugely successful campaign about Maltese olive oil some time back – perhaps the relevant ministries and departments could devise an action plan to get people to buy more local, healthy produce.