A fresh take on tradition .

Ricky Falzon is a long way from the island of Malta in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

Despite being oceans away he has kept the traditions of his family’s ancestors alive and cooking.

From secret ingredient sausages and pepper cheese to pastizzis, Ricky is now recreating recipes that have been passed down to him through four generations.  

Ricky Falzon has a passion for food and for the Greater Whitsunday region.

He is taking the best of his family's food traditions and applying them to fresh and modern ways through innovated solutions and creative cooking with his business Frisk Deli.

“It is a story that dates back to the island and has been passed down to me. I have tweaked the recipes, to modernise them, to appeal to a new customer base,” he said.

Growing up Ricky had a passion for food and spent many days with his Nannu and late father David under the family home making Maltese sausages.

During his childhood Ricky had dreams of becoming a chef, as he always had a natural gift for cooking, spending many hours in the kitchen helping prepare dinner.

Fast forward to today, he is currently still working full- time in the mining industry, building Frisk Deli and running Avenue Café.

Like his great- grandfather, Ricky has inherited a strong work ethic, combined with his talent for reinvention, it has led him to innovate tradition.

“My great -grandfather was a butcher in Malta and immigrated to Australia and like all other Maltese folk back then, he had to work multiple jobs, so he cut cane and made sausages, to buy his cane farm”.

It was his great-grandfather’s Maltese sausage recipe that was handed down through the family, but it was Ricky’s curiosity which found him creating pepper cheese and pastizzis.

“I said to Mum and Dad back then I haven’t had cheese pastizzis or pepper cheese for ages, and said they are having trouble finding them.  So, I said, why can’t we make them?

“And that was the start. There has been a lot of development with this product, the cheese was developed purely through me.

“I would make a batch and send it out and get the feedback, all the good bad and the ugly, most of the time it was bad and ugly,” he joked.

Ricky said all his Frisk Deli products are accredited and meet the standards of Food Safe Queensland and HACCP which was 12-month journey of red tape and lessons.  

He said the biggest issue they had was merging traditional practices into a food safe environment, that Frisk Deli could operate under.

“There was a lot of traditional aspects that I couldn’t apply, to making pepper cheese. Traditionally how they would do it, was to go down to the paddock and milk the cow drop a rennet table in it. By the time they walked up to the house, it started curdling, and by lunchtime pastizzis would be made.”

Part of the traditional process was during the winter months cheese would hang in the shed on a stainless- steel  gridded rack with hooks, where the cheese would be smothered in salt so bugs wouldn’t get caught in it, while drying in the breeze.

Today for health and safety standards, new ways to make the traditional cheese had to be found and Ricky’s father and brother created a modern replica with an all-year-round cheese drying machine.

Ricky said at the heart of Frisk Deli, which mean fresh in Maltese, was to continue to create traditional products through modern technologies.

“I would love to have a bigger facility in the future.

“Our vision is to be punching out Frisk Deli Maltese goods, from the region in Australia and overseas. It can get as big as it likes as long as it holds these three things taste, tradition and modern merging. – I will be happy.

“I have been able to innovate up until now and I am sure as I move forward with the use of technology, I will be able to keep punching forward.”

Frisk Deli is run by Ricky Falzon and Cath Martin who make fresh Maltese goods in their kitchen in North Mackay.

And forward Frisk Deli is moving.

With keen interest to export across the country, with several interstate Maltese wholesalers interested in his products, Ricky wants to put Mackay on the map.  

“I love Mackay. I love the region. I love what we do, and we are undervalued.

“The diversity of our region is incredible and, in an hour, and half drive you are in a completely different place.”

When asked what the next five years looks like, Ricky wants to grow and thrive right here in the Greater Whitsunday region, with dreams of a factory employing the region’s people and manufacturing handmade small goods from our region’s best agricultural products. 

It is safe to say there is a new chapter in Ricky’s family story to pass on, thanks to the foundations of tradition that have helped create a new way of doing things.

For more information or to check out Frisk Deli’s Maltese small goods visit:  https://www.facebook.com/FriskDeli