A new store has just opened in Valletta's St Paul's Street, and it's giving us all the cosy autumn feels! Barbuto Natural - or St Paul's Store as it appears on their vintage storefront signage - is a teensy speciality grocery packed to the rafters with all the organic produce your foodie heart desires, including fresh seasonal veggies as well as bottles of organic tomato sauces, small batch beer and award-winning olive oils.
The Barbuto brand is based in Sicily but run by Jean Paul Mifsud, a Maltese TV investigative journalist turned eco-farmer living the agricultural dream. His son, Jacques-Paul, decided to open the store in Malta and import the fresh produce from the family farm itself. Offering everything from barn-fresh eggs to chestnuts and wildflower honey, Barbuto Natural is a far cry from factory farmed supermarket products you normally see on the shelves, and the difference in taste is palpable. We're happy to make the switch to Barbuto free-range eggs for a hearty breakfast, doing away with plastic egg cartons while we're at it!
The shop is as rustic as it gets, with wild rosemary sprigs and old wooden crates overflowing with butternut squash and red peppers, inspiring customers to dream up hearty soups and risottos for the chillier months. The shop also serves as a collection point for boxes of seasonal vegetables which can be ordered in advance, and stocks a selection of pantry items such as spelt pasta from selected brands.
Barbuto Natural has come at the perfect time for the run-up to Christmas, where they will be putting together luxury organic hampers, without the use of any nasty cellophane, and their award-winning olive oils are the perfect gift for the foodie in your life! Their Barbuto Premium olive oil, rich in colour, viscosity and of course taste, comes with a fitting price tag of €50 for a 500ml bottle. Only 300 bottles are produced a year, and each bottle is numbered accordingly. It's even used in super fancy London Mayfair restaurant HIDE - wow!
Their cutesy €5 mini bottles of olive oil would make thoughtful stocking fillers, or even act as the perfect Secret Santa gift for your co-workers!
If you're a bit of a craft beer connoisseur, you're in for a treat, as Barbuto Natural boasts their own range of five quirky organic and naturally fermented brews as part of their Alphabet Collection range. Each is based on a letter of the alphabet and dedicated to the person who helped come up with the blend. One of them is an artichoke beer, one of only two artichoke beers in the world, and the only one which is organic - fancy that!
We love to see new concept stores opening up in the capital city, and we've got high hopes for Barbuto Natural. In a world full of mass production and excessive plastic packaging, we're so pleased to be able to revert to the simple pleasures of old-world grocery shops bursting at the seams with a bounty of produce grown with love and care, which certainly translates into taste on our plates!