Malta is a pretty place, but it's not the most stunning scenery I've ever seen. The sea is pretty, but nothing like the crystal blue waters of Greece. The land is flat, and mostly all the same sandstone color. There are very few trees.
The thing that attracted me to Malta in the first place was reading in a guide book (Lonely Planet's Guide to Mediterranean Europe) that Malta was home to the world's oldest free-standing structures. I'm not sure that this is totally true, since places like Newgrange in Ireland are probably at least as old, but I'm not sure what qualifies as "free-standing." Anyway, dating from around 3500-4000B.C., the megalithic temples on Malta are pretty darn old. Other than the temples and a couple of cathedrals, there isn't much in the way of monuments on Malta, probably because it's been conquered by just about everybody at least once. There is one particularly nice cathedral in Valetta (I believe it's called St. John's Co-Cathedral) with an exquisite floor, covered in brightly colored tiles (albeit mostly with rather morbid designs).
Malta is hot. According to the charts I've seen (Lonely Planet again), it's always relatively warm, but in the summer, it's sweltering. I took several cold showers per day, and spent almost as much of my time laying in front of a fan as I spent doing anything else. Hot, hot, hot.
Malta is fairly cheap, but it's easy to be deceived. The Maltese Lira (sometimes called the pound, since the British were the last to claim Malta as their own) is actually worth significantly more than the U.S. Dollar. When I was there (summer '97), it was around $2.50US to £1 Maltese. So, just because a sandwich only costs £1 Maltese doesn't mean it's all that cheap. Nevertheless, costs in Malta are fairly reasonable. The hostel I stayed in was only £2.50 (!$6.25) per night, which is less than many of the hostels in Greece, and it was much nicer. (Actually, I recommend the place, if for no other reason than that the atmosphere was nice: it's called Hibernia House, in Sliema. Quite a few people seem to come there to learn English, so I met people from France, Libya, Italy and Bangladesh who were all learning English there. In fact, I think I was the only person who WASN'T there to improve my English, though they teased me by saying that I was.)
I don't know that Malta really has that much food of its own. If they do, it's not all that common. I did have some very cheap, very good pastries (I think it was some kind of fruit, either date or fig, inside a deep-fried filo-type dough) which I had never seen or heard of before, but I didn't see much else. There's a great deal of Italian influence, because of the proximity of Sicily to Malta, and a huge British influence (it wasn't that long ago that Britain finally gave Malta its freedom). Of course, there's also the American influence: McDonald's and Burger King.
Maltese culture is peculiar. I found the Maltese to be a bit stand-offish, but certainly not as rude as the Greeks. They didn't go very far out of their way to be helpful, but they answered questions and gave directions in a polite manner. For such a small island (250km^2, population ~350,000), Malta houses a phenomenal number of tourists, so it's no great surprise that they don't always appreciate dealing with us.
I found Maltese men to be very much like their Italian counterparts, if not worse. I didn't do much clubbing in Italy, but the few times I did, I never noticed anything like the way men treated women in Malta. Some of the worst offenders were Italian or American tourists, but in my experience (however small that may be), Maltese women are so used to harassment that they would sooner leave a bar where they are being harassed than actually do something about the offender.
I was only there for a week, but Malta seemed reasonably clean. The youth hostel was fairly clean, though the residents generally took it upon themselves to make sure of that. I can't comment much further on that, having only stayed in one place.
Flat. Small. Dusty.
Malta isn't the greatest place to cycle, because there is no road AROUND the island. Instead, if you want to "see the island," you have to zig-zag in and out of the island, covering more miles than one would think necessary. I left my bike at the youth hostel and took a bus to go see the Temples, and the main town, Valetta, was small enough that I just walked everywhere (you can walk around the entire city in less than two hours, probably closer to one). The roads are very slick (the sound of tires squeeling is omnipresent in Malta) and not terribly well maintained. Remember also that, having recently been a British colony, they drive on the left side of the road.