Malta coffee guide: chicory, clove and three island roasters

Malta took to coffee early. In Vicky Coffee’s telling, Turkish slaves brought the drink to the islands under the Knights of St John in the 16th and 17th centuries, and a 17th-century priest, Domenico Magri, wrote that it was already “widely practiced” there. The traditional Maltese cup, kafè msajjar, is brewed with chicory, aniseed and clove; chicory was grown widely on the islands and stretched the coffee when supplies were short. LOT61 in Burmarrad, Coffee Circus in Valletta and Vicky Coffee in Victoria on Gozo roast their own coffee. Around them, a handful of coffee shops in Sliema, St Julian’s and Gżira serve or sell coffee from roasters abroad, among them Square Mile, Five Elephant, Gardelli, La Cabra and Tim Wendelboe.

LOT61, Valletta and St Julian’s

LOT61 runs two coffee bars, one in Valletta and one at Spinola Park in St Julian’s, and roasts at a roastery in Burmarrad. The green coffee comes from the current harvest, from farms in different parts of the world, and is sample roasted, graded and checked before it goes to the Giesen roaster, by hand: “There is no auto-pilot with craft roasting.” The roasting happens twice a week, and the coffee goes out the same week to the bars, to cafés, hotels, restaurants and offices, and to more than 40 coffee shops across Malta and Gozo. The business has committed to becoming a circular coffee brand, and its mission is “to awaken people to the joy of craft”. Brew guides cover everything from the moka pot and Chemex to the AeroPress.

Coffee Circus, from Valletta to Marsalforn

Coffee Circus opened its first café in 2018, and its espresso machine arrived just hours before the doors opened. A second café, Connections, followed in 2019 by the sea in Marsaskala, built largely by hand by the team and local craftspeople. In 2020 came a van found abandoned in a rural village and restored over six months, and by 2023 Coffee Circus had cafés around the island and one in Vilnius. The roastery came in 2024 and 2025: every bag is now roasted in Valletta, in small batches, every fortnight, and sent out to the cafés and to subscribers.

Each café has a theme. Lisboa hides in a basement in Valletta, with Portuguese-inspired tiles and a Portuguese-inspired menu with Maltese touches. Porto is a marina café in Ta’ Xbiex with pastéis de nata and vintage roasting equipment. China, at Pretty Bay in Birżebbuġa, is family-run, dog-friendly and Asian-inspired, Riviera is an upcycled beach kiosk by the bay in Mellieħa, and Joy is in Marsalforn on Gozo. Bebbuwx, a small coffee truck wrapped in old newspaper pages, is parked at Buġibba Jetty for passengers on the Gozo and Comino ferries. The retail range is mostly single origins at a medium roast, from Uganda’s Clarke Farm to a Kenya peaberry, with the Latino Blend as the house espresso.

Vicky Coffee, Victoria in Gozo

Vicky Coffee is an independent roaster in Gozo, founded by George Larry Zammit, and it roasts inside Victoria Central, a coffeehouse and kitchen in Victoria. The cupping workshop at the roastery is billed as a session at “Gozo’s Only Coffee Roastery”: two hours of coffee origins and processing, sample roasting and roasting profiles, a guided cupping and hands-on brewing with an SCA-certified host and roaster. The bar brews single origins from Ethiopia, Tanzania, Guatemala and Colombia on V60, Chemex and AeroPress, among them a honey-processed geisha from La Molienda in Huila and a thermal-shock Red Bourbon from El Renacer in Caldas. The house Maltese coffee is the traditional blend with chicory, clove and aniseed, served as a French press, and Vicky Coffee also sells it by the bag.

COFFEE & strangers, Sliema

Deandra Gauci founded COFFEE & strangers in 2016, and its espresso bar in Sliema was, by its own account, the first sensory experience espresso bar in Malta. The bar won best specialty café in Malta at the European Coffee Trip Awards in 2024 and again in 2025. The coffee comes from roasters abroad and changes with a monthly filter menu: Assembly’s Duwancho from Ethiopia, Five Elephant’s Rugori from Rwanda, Square Mile’s Lalesa Ephtah, a hop-fermented geisha from MOK and Manhattan’s Shoondhisa. Every pour-over and single-origin espresso arrives with a Sip & Read card naming the roaster, origin, process and tasting notes, and on Friday evenings the bar opens late for Coffee Into The Night.

COFFEE & strangers is a coffee institute as well as a bar, accredited with the Specialty Coffee Association and the Coffee Quality Institute. Deandra is an SCA Authorised Trainer, a Q Arabica and Q Robusta Grader and a Q Instructor, and the team teaches SCA courses, Q Grader courses and latte art. The business also distributes coffee wholesale from Square Mile, Onyx Coffee Lab, Five Elephant, Schot, Fjord, Bonanza, Keen and Manhattan, rotating the roasters every week.

Monolith, St Julian’s

Monolith is a coffee bar in St Julian’s by day and a cocktail bar by night, under the motto “Quality is the only option”. The coffee comes from Gardelli Specialty Coffees and La Cabra. The V60 is hand-poured from a single origin and served for two, with a Premium Rarity pour above the standard one, and the espresso menu runs from macchiato to flat white and mocha, with croissants baked fresh. In the evening the menu moves to signature cocktails, rare spirits and craft beer, and World Cup matches play on 4K screens.

Loaf, Gżira, Sliema and Ta’ Xbiex

Loaf is a sourdough bakehouse and coffee shop that started in Gżira, opened a second café in an alley in Sliema in March 2026 and a third on the Ta’ Xbiex seafront by May, with a full brunch menu and a terrace. Its shop sells sourdough and pastries alongside loose-leaf tea, chai and ceremonial matcha, and coffee bags from nine roasters: Tim Wendelboe, La Cabra, Kiss the Hippo, Father Carpenter, Wide Awake, Tanat, Hermanos, DAK and Sip Collective.

What you need to know about Malta specialty coffee

Which coffee shops in Malta roast their own coffee? LOT61 roasts in Burmarrad for its coffee bars in Valletta and St Julian’s, Coffee Circus roasts in Valletta for its cafés around Malta and Gozo, and Vicky Coffee roasts at Victoria Central in Gozo.

Which roasters do the other cafés serve? COFFEE & strangers rotates roasters such as Square Mile, Five Elephant, Manhattan, Assembly and MOK, Monolith pours Gardelli and La Cabra, and Loaf sells bags from Tim Wendelboe, La Cabra, Kiss the Hippo and six other roasters.

Where is the specialty coffee in Gozo? Vicky Coffee roasts and brews at Victoria Central in Victoria, and Coffee Circus has a café, Joy, in Marsalforn.

What is traditional Maltese coffee? Kafè msajjar is brewed with chicory, aniseed and clove. Vicky Coffee sells a Maltese blend of Arabica and Robusta with those spices and serves it as a French press at Victoria Central.

Where can you learn about coffee in Malta? COFFEE & strangers in Sliema runs SCA and CQI courses, including an SCA Coffee Week and Q Grader courses, and Vicky Coffee runs two-hour cupping workshops at its roastery in Gozo.

Where is the coffee in Valletta? LOT61 has a coffee bar in Valletta and Coffee Circus has Lisboa, a basement café, and its roastery in the city.