Food on the Edge: “What we don’t see is important”

Let me start off by re-cementing this.

I love local. I am obsessed with local. Local talent. Local produce. Local effort. Local commitment. Local brands. Local music for that matter. I am a local. 

Today I wore my Souvenirs That Don’t Suck ‘Malta’ hat with pride, the same pride I wore my ¡La Luz! tshirt, and the same pride I walked around Valletta with.

The same pride I tried to instil in the brigade of speakers from this year’s Food on the Edge symposium during every interaction throughout the day.

I love local. 

But loving local doesn’t mean we cannot look to non-local for inspiration. 

From Sunday 18th till yesterday, Wednesday 21st, Nina and I were lucky enough to document the 2026 Food on the Edge symposium where a collection of outstanding Chefs, food scholars, food writers, artisans, producers, historians, marketing folk and genuine lovers of food got together to stop and listen. 

Listening is so important, it’s what I built my career on; it’s what I have honed in on for the past 21 years as a published writer. Apart from that sentence making me feel quite old, it also makes me realise that, yeah, I’ve spent a lot of time figuring out what makes sense to the way I approach things through my art of writing—the foundation always being ‘listening’. 

Over the past 4 days, I kept true to my ethos. I listened. And to my surprise, a lot of people listened back.

‘Surprise’ is perhaps the wrong word here. I think that a lot of people listen to me when they want to, but this time it felt different. I felt heard. I felt appreciated. 

But what has all this got to do with Food on the Edge coming to Malta? 

Quite simple really. Food on the Edge is all about listening. 

Food on the Edge is an Irish founded symposium where Jp McMahon and his team bring together a bunch of clever and inspiring people who see the world through food and all its systems.

This symposium is not about accolades or achievements that are reduced to a plaque on a wall; it’s about the genuine love for food. But it’s also about the worry for food, the concerns for food and the future of food. It’s also about the battles connected to food, the injustices in the food world, the icks in the food industry, the whys of the food profession, the everything connected to food. 

In these 4 short days, that my feet and back interpreted as 4 weeks, but my heart, mind and soul conceived as 4 hours, I met people I would probably never have been so fortunate to meet. I met legends.

The elusively addictive Will Goldfarb, the empathetically charismatic Matt Orlando, the endlessly fascinating Sandor Katz (obsessed with this human), the fabulously unapologetic Fabrizia Lanza, the ethically grounding Nathan Thornburgh and the hilariously intelligent Dr Janita Van Dyk. 

The list can go on forever, Nicolai Nørregaard and Nicolas Min Jørgensen probably the coolest cats I could hang with for days, to mention just a few more.

I speak to Chefs every single day of my life, Sundays included.

I speak to them on my birthday, my anniversary, when I’m sick, when I’m really not in the mood, when I’m happy and when I’m sad.

Chefs have become my people.

I feel at ease with them.

We speak the same language.

Not a language focused on only their kitchen skill or only my food documentation; we each thrive in our own fields and speak the common language of foodese.

Not ‘foodies’; as Jp said on Day 1 at OKA’s at The Villa, that’s a horrible word, we understand food at its deepest extent, to its absolute core and we remember that food is the foundation of what keeps us alive: physically and emotionally. It’s the ‘thing’ that drives us the craziest, and it’s the ‘thing’ that makes us the happiest. 

Collectively the attention deficit in the room must have been as outstanding as the amount of Michelin stars in the room. 

But that’s OK. 

Actually…  it’s more than OK, it’s fucking awesome. 

When people with the same mission or the same understanding of something come together they can be themselves. I don’t get starstruck by icons like the ones I mentioned earlier, I get inspired.

I listen. I watch.

I watch how they interact with one another, I watch how they eat the rabbit shoulder and panfried lampuki we shared on Day 4 at Ta’ Ċiċivetta Farm, I watch and realise that they are human. 

Eating with someone makes them so much more human. 

Seeing a Chef or food expert, eat with their hands, or pick something up off a bare table and proceed to put it into their mouth without any sanitation trepidation makes me respect them a little bit more. 

These things make me feel normal. 

I eat with my hands most days (forks and knives are saved for formal dining only). I don’t kill the ants that run around in my kitchen (that land was theirs before it was mine). I cut the mold off that hard cheese and eat around it (unless it’s red or some funky vibrant colour; I listened, Sandor). I say ‘fuck avocados’ on a near weekly basis (preach Fabrizia) and I’m so elated by the fact that others, THESE others feel the same way. 

Sometimes we glorify food in a way where a truffle or caviar is depicted as more valuable than a good fucking carrot (shoutout to Alan Micks); sometimes we think that a ‘poor’ dish is uncool (kudos to Stephen McAllister) and sometimes we forget that that food is just food (reminder for bajtra). 

Sometimes all we need is a shared experience where we are so immersed in a discussion that you forget who you are speaking to. You don’t need to pretend, you don’t need to perform and you don’t need to be anything but yourself. Share your experience, say what you think and just say things like ‘fuck Lidl’ (respect Josh Eggleton) and just grab your knife and cut out a chunk of the freshly picked radish, root and stem still in tact (yes I’m talking about you Freddy Bird).

Food is food. 

Sometimes it’s good, sometimes you can say ‘thanks, but no thanks’.

The things I learned from Food on the Edge will live with me forever. 

From the talks.

From the bus ride. 

From the queue to the restrooms.

You never quite know when inspiration will strike.