Former sous chef at Roux at Parliament Square and three-Michelin-starred Maaemo in Oslo, he puts modern British riffs on Maltese produce, with dishes like turbot-and-scallop Wellington with baby leek and champagne beurre-blanc. Just around the corner is Gracy’s, a 17th-century palazzo turned glam supper club, with a sky-high terrace bar, a karaoke bar in the 450-year-old vaults, and a stunning restaurant headed up by Tom Peters. Outside, fine wines are paired with season-driven small plates: prawn tacos with tempura and pickled cabbage, wild mushroom arancini topped with truffle mayo and calamari goujons with wasabi. The interior of the pink-hued restaurant is perfect for date nights, with flatteringly lit vaults and clubby beats. I peer up at the stately Grandmaster’s Palace as kids whizz across St George’s Square on scooters, parents chasing them. The first whisper of spring is in the air as I settle in on the terrace at 59 Republic. Maltese food is also finally getting the attention it deserves. And the LGBT scene is booming, too, with Malta scoring top points on the Rainbow Europe Map and EuroPride Valletta luring thousands to the capital this September.
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Once cast aside by the in-crowd as an island for retirees, Malta is getting its groove on as a hot party island in the Med, with a raft of summer festivals including DJ Annie Mac’s Lost and Found, four days of electric beats, boat parties and castle raves, and July’s massive and free Isle of Malta MTV. Alchemy is another hotspot, serving cocktails made with ingredients such as mushroom gin and mastiha liqueur. Nowadays it pulses with nightlife, locals spilling out onto the cobbles for alfresco drinks, or else heading to Trabuxu to sip Maltese wines beneath 400-year-old vaults. He points out Strait Street, or ‘The Gut’, where prostitutes once cavorted with drunken sailors. “Malta is almost the Middle East, but not quite almost Africa, but not quite almost Italy, but not quite.” “And it’s all wrapped around baroque architecture and megalithic temples older than the pyramids,” he says. From May 2023, the former BBC journalist will be offering small-group tours of Valletta’s dark side, with stories of witchcraft, murder and the naughty Knights of St John.Īs we wander through the twisting backstreets, Mario tells me how familiar Malta is to British travellers: the sense of humour, driving on the left, telephone boxes.
EU investment has raised standards and given locals the incentive to open bars, restaurants and clubs.”ĭiving into the less-explored corners of Malta’s history, Mario’s tours forego the usual tourist spiel and draw on obscure sources, including death certificates, police reports, rare books, Vatican archives and even Roman Inquisition records. “Now there are glitzy cocktail bars next to sushi restaurants and high-class steak houses. If you saw a handful of people on the main street at 10pm, it was a lot,” says Mario Cacciottolo, guide and founder of Dark Malta Tours. Honey-stone houses have been spruced up with brightly painted gallariji, the eye-catching wooden balconies that are perfect for spying on neighbours and trapping the winter sun.īut this revival started even earlier: in 2014, Italian architect Renzo Piano put Valletta back on the map with his City Gate project, redesigning the main entrance to the fortified city, with a new gate, open-air theatre set in the ruins of the old opera house, and a striking new parliament building – nicknamed ‘the cheese grater’ – with a pixelated, fretted façade echoing the island’s starkly eroded coastline.
Since it seized the European Capital of Culture reins in 2018, boutique hotels, cafés and cocktail bars have been taking root in Renaissance palazzi. Shadows deepen and lights flicker on in the old town.īack on dry land, Valletta has become cooler than ever. As we approach St Elmo Bridge, Sunday bells peal from domes and churches, reverberating across the Grand Harbour. “It was the backdrop for Baelor in Game of Thrones and Ridley Scott is filming Gladiator 2 there,” he says, voice muffled by the breeze. “Over there is Manoel Island and its star fort,” shouts MC Adventure guide Massimiliano, pointing his paddle at its formidable bastions. Malta’s charms are many, and Valletta has “film set” written all over it, too – and producers have cottoned on, too. Wind and spray whip me as I dip my paddle into the choppy sea, passing cliffs where fishermen stare into the silver distance and boys leap into watery depths to raucous cheers. Malta’s capital is impressive at ground level, but, seen from a kayak, it is astonishing. Valletta’s limestone fortifications glow in the late-afternoon light, as high and impenetrable as when the Knights of St John built them in the mid-16th century.
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