Peperino

Order the pizza. The tartare is what happens when a wood-fired oven gets asked a raw question.

The review

Peperino's Neapolitan credentials are genuine — a dough laboratory, 48-hour proofs, a wood oven turning out some of Malta's best pizza on the Mercury Tower piazza. None of that machinery helps raw beef. The tartare arrives like an afterthought wearing a starter's price: the cut loose and wet, the colour tired, the promised egg yolk already folded through somewhere back-of-house — robbing you of the one ritual this dish owes its eater. The seasoning sits flat, as if the kitchen's palate were calibrated for tomato and char rather than acid and raw fat. It isn't offensive; it's beside the point, like ordering carbonara at a sushi counter. The margherita two tables over was magnificent. Eat that. This ranking judges the tartare, not the oven.

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