ADDRESS BY THE HON. MICHAEL REFALO MINISTER FOR TOURISM ON THE OCCASION OF THE COOKERY AND FOOD REVIEW LAUNCH

My most sincere congratulations to you Mr. President, your Committee and members of the Malta Food and Cookery Association for taking the initiative to launch a publication which meets exacting professional standards and will be as useful to the practitioner as of interest and informative to all those who enjoy and delight others in the practice of the culinary arts.

It is indeed a pity that Parliamentary commitments have kept me away from being here with you to listen, follow and learn from the previous speakers' launch presentations.

I need hardly tell you that gastronomic excellence enhances even the most enjoyable of occasions. Likewise there is a relative Richter scale of degrees in disaster when lack of professionalism and inadequacy threaten or actually ruin potentially the most pleasant of experiences.

Gastronomy is part of a nation's culture. Gastronomy often reflects and sometimes strengthens a nation's very identity. For example, Maltese cuisine, as the Malta Tourism Authority's brochure on gastronomy tells us, is "the offspring of a centuries long relationship between the indigenous people of our islands and the many foreign dominations."

Although it may be difficult to trace and wade through this complicated and diverse DNA, these unwelcome foreign intruders, when finally banished or in turn ousted by other invaders from our shores, left a legacy of their predilection for their own particular of food, which through the years, has greatly influenced local tastes and culinary traditions.

The most popular Maltese specialities are Moorish or Sicilian in origin. However, next to the many restaurants and eateries which pay true or mock homage to French, Italian, Asian and American roots, unless one also includes the many fish restaurants that abound, there are regrettably few places that truly specialise in traditional, if less sophisticated, but excellent Maltese dishes.

Perhaps The Cookery and Food Review could become a catalyst for publicising and making traditional Maltese dishes more popular among the catering fraternity and also spur some to invest in Maltese food outlets.

Traditional recipes have been passed down from one generation to another. One must not forget to mention the number of regional differences and variations, which, like their linguistic counterparts, show up a housewife's or cooks' local roots.

I could go on and on to describe, dissect, rhapsodise and romanticise on Maltese food, its origins and history, its meaning as well as about the festive and other occasions when certain dishes are brought to table, or otherwise grace restaurant menus and displays in patissier's shop windows. That I do not, is no reflection of its importance to Malta's overall tourism offer.

Visitors' search for interesting holiday experiences are not limited to looking for a favourite square metre of sand or some remote outcrop of rock where to bask and cook themselves to a frazzle. While a warm climate and clear azure seas are always most alluring attractions visitors thirst for knowledge, historical, cultural, and factual, include the excitement that accompanies the successful discovery of the traditional food and wines of the country they visit.

The increase in tourism volume, not least the coming on stream of top of the range hotels in answer to the demand and arrival of a more discerning clientele, has spurred the more alert of our entrepreneurs and the more innovative and adventurous of chef patrons to invest in good quality restaurants.

These include some excellent ones specialising in Maltese cuisine which, although rustic and humble of birth, has come through the centuries and developed through the craft and hands of generations of housewives and more recently by the more refined and trained ones of a new breed of chefs and this without loosing its fragrances, taste and originality.

The very fact that one of the first in Tourism's series of specialist brochures published deals with Malta's gastronomical delights, clearly shows the importance which the Ministry and the Authority place on all aspects of Malta's history, culture and identity.

We in Malta are no exception. The World Tourism Organisation, in preparation for an international conference which will be held in Cyprus this coming November, is currently surveying members on Local Food in Tourism Policies. Naturally the Ministry has sent copies of the WTO questionnaire to a number of official bodies and associations for their reactions and comments and, in the knowledge that the Malta Food and Cookery Association will make a very valid contribution to the Malta side of the survey, I am pleased to hand over a copy of WTO's documentation to Mr. Zarb.

There are now more than 800 catering outlets in Malta and Gozo. As in most countries one finds excellent and good restaurants as well as tourist traps and downright disasters. One meets staff who are friendly and efficient and others whose off hand manners and surly faces put clients off from an establishment although the poor chef might have even surpassed himself to present a good meal.

Malta and Gozo have restaurants to suit every pocket and every taste. I cannot however understand the masochistic tendencies of habitual groaners and grousers who complain of everything under the sun and then, religiously return, week in, week out, as if drawn by some mysterious death wish, to the same board which, week in week out, apparently gives their taste buds and stomach so much cause for discomfort.

There is no doubt that in recent years the general standard of cuisine has improved beyond recognition. Since 1989 the Institute for Tourism Studies has given the industry one class after another of well trained chefs, some of whom now lead brigades in Malta's top hotels and restaurants.

ITS students receive exposure both locally and overseas as they are sent on industrial placements in the best hotels abroad. Their trophy and medal winning exploits in local and foreign competitions have become very much the order of the day.

If momentarily I turn my attention to wine, a very essential and pleasant companion to a good meal, I am proud to say most categorically that the last decade or so has seen a very vast improvement in quality and in the depth and variety of Maltese wines. I would like to think that, as in the culinary arts, this qualitative trend also owes its source to the parallel development and expansion of our tourism industry.

To conclude my address to you this afternoon may I again wish you all success and augur that your Association's "Cookery and Food Review" will lead to the achievement of higher professional standards in catering and reflect the true social dimension which your members and their peers in the trade deserve.

May I wish you all the luck and thank you again for giving me this opportunity to meet you all on this auspicious and happy occasion.