MALTA & GOZO

The best steak tartare in Malta

7 plates across Malta and Gozo, ranked from Toro Toro at 8.4/10 down to Era Ora Steakhouse at 2.1/10.

Malta is the hardest place on this list to eat raw beef well, and the reason is structural. The island's best kitchens are seafood kitchens and Italian kitchens, and both treat tartare as a box to tick rather than a dish to defend. The spread here is brutal — the gap between the top plate and the bottom one is wider in Malta than in Sweden and Austria combined.

The plates that work share one trait: somebody decided the tartare mattered. Toro Toro runs it as a genuine composition — chipotle emulsion for smoke, sun-dried tomato for sweetness, truffle to round it — eleven floors up the Mercury Tower, and it is the only tartare on this entire ranking that made me grin at first bite. Caviar & Bull piles pedigreed components into crispy cones with a cured yolk and optional sturgeon caviar; as spectacle it is top three, as beef it is twelfth.

Below that, the failures are instructive. Peperino makes some of the island's best pizza and a tartare that tastes like an afterthought. Santini's marina kitchen has quietly folded the standalone tartare into a fettuccine Alfredo, where the raw beef plays condiment — which is, honestly, the better dish. La Vela's menu describes it in four words and the plate honours that indifference exactly. Terrazzo folds sausage through raw beef above the most beautiful view on this entire list. Era Ora serves three different beef tartares and will not tell you what is in any of them.

If you are in St Julian's and you want raw beef, go up the tower. If you are on Gozo, order the fish.

Every Maltese tartare, ranked

  1. #5 Toro Toro St Julian's, Malta·Pan-Latin high-rise Truffle, chipotle emulsion and sun-dried tomato on the 11th floor of a Zaha Hadid tower — the most fun a tartare had all year. 8.4 /10
  2. #11 Santini St Julian's, Malta·Sicilian marina Sicilian polish above the Portomaso masts — competent beef that lately prefers riding a fettuccine Alfredo to standing alone. 7.2 /10
  3. #13 Peperino St Julian's, Malta·Pizzeria moonlighting Order the pizza. The tartare is what happens when a wood-fired oven gets asked a raw question. 6.6 /10
  4. #14 Caviar & Bull St Julian's, Malta·Caviar theatre Black Angus, cured yolk, sturgeon caviar and crispy cones — a tartare dressed for the opera that forgets to sing. 6.4 /10
  5. #15 Terrazzo Munxar, Gozo, Malta·Gozitan misfire The finest view on this list, wrapped around its least coherent plate: sausage, cheese and beef, none of them on speaking terms. 2.9 /10
  6. #16 La Vela Pietà, Malta·Seafood house, off duty Eighteen euros for cold beef and an apology. The four-word menu description was the most generous thing about it. 2.5 /10
  7. #17 Era Ora Steakhouse St Julian's, Malta·Three tartares, no answers Era Ora serves three beef tartares and won't say what's in this one. Its author's own recipe suggests passion fruit, soy and ginger — which explains a great deal and rescues nothing. 2.1 /10

?COMMON QUESTIONS

Frequently asked

Where is the best steak tartare in Malta?

Toro Toro in St Julian's takes the Maltese crown at 8.4/10 — a pan-Latin tartare of truffle, chipotle emulsion and sun-dried tomato, served on the eleventh floor of the Mercury Tower.

Is steak tartare common in Malta?

It appears widely on St Julian's menus, but usually as a line item rather than a speciality. Most of the island's strongest kitchens are seafood or Neapolitan houses, and the tartare tends to reflect that — competent at best, indifferent at worst.

Which Maltese restaurants should I avoid for tartare?

The bottom three on this ranking all scored under 3/10 for the same reason: the kitchen has no real interest in the dish. That is a judgement on the tartare alone — two of the three serve excellent food that is not raw beef.

Is there good steak tartare on Gozo?

Not on this ranking. The one Gozitan entry, in Xlendi, folds sausage through the raw beef and buries it under peppered ġbejniet, which flattens the meat entirely. The view is the finest on this list; the plate is not.

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