But as we lay here, sprawled on the floor, exhausted and probably still hungry, let’s look back at all the fallen heroes and controversial moments in these last couple of weeks.

So things kicked off predictably enough, with evergreen favourites like sausage rolls and qassatat quickly destroying the newer and mostly blasphemous Frankensteins like chicken pastizzi, mango rib (shudder) and meat pies. But it wasn’t long until some weird shit started happening.

First of all, we need to talk about the fall of the irkotta pastizz.

Y’all, irkotta. pastizzi. lost. out. to. żebbuġ. pizzas. 

Never mind the fact that I’m someone who prefers irkotta over piżelli.

Never mind the fact that I’m one of those fussy eaters that need to pick out all the żebbuġ from a pizza, because Margheritas in pastizzerias are rarer than diamonds these days.

But come on guys, we can’t have something as classic as the irkotta pastizzi lose by the second round… to an oily square, no less! Unacceptable.

On the other side of the table, trouble was brewing for my personal all-time favourite, the Wudy sausage roll.

Now we already told you Wudy is the best item over three years ago and it still hasn’t changed. We even had an entire Lovin Eats episode dedicated to ranking different Wudy sausage rolls from all over the island, ffs.

But of course, because we can’t have nice things, somehow the dreaded piżelli took that hard-fought battle… which for the record saw over 2,000 votes being cast.

At the end though, amidst all this travesty, I do have to admit that I ended up siding with a past foe in the final round, voting for the żebbuġ pizza against the piżelli.

Because even if someone trashes Manchester United, I’ll still side with them if they had to come up against Liverpool. That’s just the way the oily cookie crumbles, folks.

Lovin Malta reached out to Ella Lautier, the brains behind the mega food tournament, to see what she was rooting for herself.

“I think it would have to be timpana or pizza taż-żebbuġ,” Ella says, breaking my heart into a tiny little pieces. “Either or really.”

This is the second food tournament of its kind that Ella kicked off on nearly 60,000-strong forum The Salott, after one on Malta’s favourite snack this time last year had gathered tens of thousands of votes and launched countless memes…. eventually crowning Krips as the winner.

“Most people are stuck indoors with just their phones for entertainment, so at least something like this gets them talking and engaging,” Ella elaborated.

And talk and engage they did.

Do you agree with the final decision to crown the żebbuġ pizza as the winner? Tag someone else who’s also wrong.