For many years, Mona Farrugia wrote a restaurant column for The Sunday Times called Mona's Meals. People thought she was a man, she was fat, she was old, she was ugly. The reason: Mona Farrugia was the first person in Malta to call a spade a spade. Restaurants had had it easy for a long time and critiques did not exist before she appeared in 2000. Every restaurant was 'good, great and even greater', all reviews were puff pieces.
The column never carried her photo because Mona is not interested in being recognised or in being given 'special treatment'. All she wanted - still wants - is a good meal, and she's willing to pay for it, but if the meal's no good, then the restaurant must be willing to pay for it too.
Somewhere in 2005, Mona realised that carbohydrates were hiking up her sugar levels, contributing to the onset of diabetes and more than necessary hip padding. She started writing low-carb recipes for herself and changed her lifestyle accordingly. Mona's Meals: The Foodbook, (Merlin Library, 2007), introduced by Malta's leading cardiac surgeon Alex Manche', was the result. It was Malta's Christmas bestseller in 2007. The paperback edition is still on sale in all major bookshops including Merlin Library and all Agenda outlets.
In spite of all the low-carb shebang, Mona says she'll eat anything once, except for the cockroach-like deep-fried insects at Chatuchak market in Bangkok. She has never been presented with bits of human flesh but wonders what she would do if she were and the occasion called for it.
Mona has worked in every aspect of restaurants from the floor, which she did happily and with more pride than is normally found in your average waitress, to the kitchen where she specialised in pastry. She has worked with everyone from bossy female head-waitresses who pinched clams off the customers' spaghetti before it was served, to commis chefs on methadone who couldn't even press the 'open' button on a microwave if it pinged open and hit them in the groin
She has followed several courses at the ITS, including all those available in Food Preparation and Production and Pastry Techniques. These courses have basically served to make her aware of the low level of skill combined with the high level of bitchiness required to be a 'culinary' teacher, and the importance of knowing how to fry scotch eggs. In 2008 she went back to the ITS, this time to review it, and found that sadly, nothing had changed.
Mona is not just a traveller, she is an obsessed tourist. Not only does she need to get away from Malta at least every two months, she needs to get away and far. She adores Africa and the Indian Ocean. Her idea of absolute bliss is the Indian Ocean, speficially the Maldives. She has been producing travelogues for the national TV station, TVM, since 1999 and is still travel writing (it's easier when there is no camera chasing you continuously). She is resident travel writer for FM, the Sunday Times of Malta's fashion glossy and Money, Malta's coolest business and lifestyle magazine.
Her thesis on Food as Communication (available at the Melitensia section at the University of Malta) helped her discover many things: mainly how important it is to research, as well as the fact that food critics in New York have work within the same love-hate environment as she does in Malta: revered by the public, respected by good chefs, and bitched about by the bad chefs.
2005 saw the birth of planetmona. Starting out quietly, the site was a mere web version of her weekly column and various newspapers and glossy magazines. Then, somewhere around 2007, the website took on a life of its own, becoming Malta's truly liberal voice where anything concerning food, eating, travel and even beauty is concerned. In 2010 Mona launched version 3 of the website which now has its own cultural critic, books editor, travel writers, international contributors and even a roaming restaurant critic whose job takes him all over the world, where he dispatches table gossip back to planetmona.
She was the only Maltese at Gourmet Voice, the first international food mediatisers conference in Cannes, France. Here she met Joel Robuchon, Ferran Adria and Alice Waters, all under the same roof: Mona can see Jordan in the streets of Valletta and not bat an eyelid but being with these culinary gods flipped her. So did being in the presence of Rose Gray at the River Cafe in London: Gray's is the only autograph Mona has ever asked for. Even sitting next to Stephen Fry at supper at Le Caprice in London did not break her out in the same kind of sweat. Nonetheless, Mona is not overwhelmed by anybody in a kitchen, which is why she gave Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley four stars in 2009 and has not bothered to return.
In 2010 Mona became the first Maltese to ever be accepted as a fully-accredited member of the prestigious Guild of Food Writers UK. This followed her years of writing and promoting good eating. In 2011 she was chosen to be a judge in the Guild's Awards: the most prestigious awards in the industry. Her constant drive is for eating better, eating genuine and eating, where possible, Maltese. Easier said than done on an island where village greengrocers eschew their own produce for that imported from Sicily.
Mona regularly holds the Mona's Meals Cookery Workshops in various kitchens, and with various chefs, around the island. The workshops are always packed with people from all walks of life and usually result in a glut of good food, much eating and a fabulous amount of drinking. Just as life should be.
