The Best Cocktail Bars in Malta for Seriously Creative Drinks

For me, a great cocktail bar goes far beyond what’s in the glass. Having grown up in London and lived in Tokyo, where the cocktail scenes are genuinely world-class, my benchmark is pretty simple: could this place hold its own in London, Tokyo, Hong Kong or Berlin?

My checkpoints? The mixologists and what they’re wearing. Glassware. Garnishes. Produce. Whether they can go off-menu within seconds when given a vague brief. How the menu is designed, whether I can see the flavour profile, what I’m drinking and, importantly, what ridiculous object I might be drinking it from. I do love a good vessel.

Does it tell a story? Is the experience immersive from the moment you order to the moment you leave? Is there meticulous attention to detail, from the glassware and garnishes to the ingredients, techniques and presentation? And if they choose to bring in the theatre, I’m talking smoke, fire, aromatics, infusions, unexpected ingredients, edible elements, unusual textures and vessels that have absolutely no business containing liquid.

But the most avant-garde vessel in Malta means very little if what’s inside it is shit. At that point, we’ve essentially just attended a very small bonfire.

Since giving up alcohol, the benchmark has become even higher. The best cocktail bars in Malta don’t relegate non-drinkers to juice and a decorative rosemary sprig. The alcohol-free drinks should get the same thought, technique and general showing-off as their boozy counterparts.

Malta hasn’t made The World’s 50 Best Bars yet. Looking at some of these, I wouldn’t rule it out.

Sophisticated hotel bar, tiny cocktail laboratory, loud speakeasy or somewhere apparently conducting experiments with tequila: the format doesn’t matter. The standards do.

In no particular order, these are the best and most creative cocktail bars in Malta that genuinely make the cut.

Kuch Kuch, St Julian’s

Hidden inside Mercury Tower, with its own entrance and another concealed behind a wall at Ruby Ray’s, Kuch Kuch feels like someone transported one of my old London haunts to Malta and then gave it a Bollywood fever dream.

 

This is liquid cuisine territory. The book-like menu guides you through flavour profiles while the team plays with unconventional ingredients, infusions, fat-washing and repurposed elements that might otherwise go to waste. Drinks arrive in increasingly unhinged vessels, while the room throws Indian references, Bollywood and Western rock into the same blender. Somehow, it works.

It’s also deliberately civilised, with table service and space for around 50 people. Going as a group? The French Egg shots are practically compulsory. And the non-alcoholic menu properly commits to the bit too, with drinks like Punk Rock Elephant combining peach shrub, cloves, lime and chestnut. Indian-inspired fusion small plates are available too, built for sharing alongside the drinks.
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Kamy Cocktail Bar, Valletta

Kamy is what happens when an art gallery develops a drinking problem.

Owner Iliyan Iliev, a charming man of not many words, presides over a tiny, maximalist living room of a bar where the walls are covered in art and some of it eventually ends up floating on your cocktail.

The Artisan collection takes works including The Starry Night, Mona Lisa and The Creation of Adam and quite literally puts them on the drinks. Elsewhere there are tiki serves, flames and properly executed classics. And that distinction matters. Kamy rather efficiently proves that a mixologist and someone who simply knows how to pour a drink are not necessarily the same thing. The spectacle is fabulous, but the drinks underneath it can actually back it up.
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La Luz, Sliema

I saw La Luz while it was still being built, went back on opening day and have returned plenty of times since. It remains one of the most distinctive bars in Sliema.

Mexican influences run through everything, from the religious iconography and neon to the formidable tequila and mezcal collection. Then there are the Ten Commandments, a cocktail menu considerably more entertaining than the tablets Moses brought down from Mount Sinai, with flavour profiles helping you navigate exactly what sort of trouble you’re ordering.

It can get loud later in the evening, but never quite uncivilised. The mixologists know their stuff, non-alcoholic requests are taken seriously, and Taco Tuesday provides a very convenient excuse to arrive hungry.
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The Brass Bar at Intercontinental Hotel, St Julian’s

Malta could use more proper hotel bars. Not restaurants with a drinks counter attached. Bars. The kind where sitting alone with a cocktail feels sophisticated rather than like your date has failed to turn up.

 

Inside the InterContinental Malta, The Brass Bar is exactly that. Low lighting, leather, brass, an enormous glowing back bar and the general air that someone sitting three stools away may be an assassin operating under diplomatic cover.

The menu travels through different eras of cocktail culture, from Prohibition to the Age of Rediscovery and beyond, giving the whole thing some structure without sacrificing the classics. Grown-up, intimate and gloriously civilised.
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Elements Cocktail Lab, Valletta

The clue is in Lab.

Tucked away on Triq id-Dejqa, Elements is small, intimate and run by decorated Bulgarian mixologist Tisho Mihaylov, whose collection of mixology awards could probably do with its own room.

Here, ordering a cocktail can feel suspiciously like triggering a small theatrical production. The menu moves through art, literature and geography, with David taking its cue from Michelangelo and arriving in sculptural form. Then there’s Chapter 1, a literature-inspired cocktail presented inside a book which is subsequently set on fire.

Liquid nitrogen, unusual textures and a little controlled pyromania all enter the equation. Your local pub this is not.
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Toro Toro Lounge, St Julian’s

Take the lift to Level 11 of Mercury Tower and you’ll find the lounge attached to chef and restaurateur Richard Sandoval’s Pan-Latin Toro Toro.

And you absolutely don’t need to be having dinner to use it.

 

Dark woods, low lighting, leather and sculptural details give the lounge its own identity, while the drinks pick up the restaurant’s Latin American thread through tequila, mezcal, pisco, chilli, corn and agave. It’s polished without feeling stiff and makes a particularly good post-dinner destination, whether that dinner happened downstairs or somewhere else entirely.

Heading to the restaurant first? They also do Taco Tuesday.
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The Thirsty Barber, St Julian’s

You enter through a red telephone box. That should probably tell you this isn’t going to be a quiet glass of Pinot Grigio.

The Thirsty Barber is one of St Julian’s established cocktail institutions: part speakeasy, part live-music bar, with dark wood, books, leather and that enormous illuminated clock looming behind the performers.

Order from the cocktail menu or, better still, tell the mixologist what you actually want. I once asked for a non-alcoholic espresso martini and got something that tasted remarkably close to the real thing rather than cold coffee experiencing an identity crisis. Live acts change regularly, so check their Facebook page before going if music is part of the plan.
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Ozzy’s Bar Voodoo Tiki, Valletta

Tiki went to New Orleans, joined a rock band and made some questionable decisions. Welcome to Ozzy’s.

Self-described as the House of Voodoo, this newer Valletta bar takes the tropical excess of tiki and drags it somewhere darker. Old stone, masks, mismatched furniture, rock-and-roll energy and cocktails with names like Ritual Sacrifice, Cobra’s Fang and Zombie. Naturally, some of them are on fire.

For the uninitiated, tiki cocktails tend to be tropical, layered and often rum-heavy, with elaborate serves very much part of the fun. Ozzy’s keeps all that theatre but swaps the Hawaiian-shirt cheerfulness for something considerably more likely to own a Black Sabbath record.
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AKI, Valletta

Most people know AKI for sushi, sashimi and Japanese-inspired small plates. What sometimes gets overlooked is that you can skip dinner entirely and head straight for the bar.

The cocktail programme goes deep into Japanese ingredients rather than simply dropping yuzu into everything and hoping for the best. Sake, shochu, Japanese whisky, umeshu, matcha, miso, sesame and shiso all make appearances, with polished presentation and enough technical wizardry to keep things interesting.

And for my London peeps, AKI has now made the trip over there too. Malta got this one first.
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The Skyroom Cocktail Bar & Grill, Sliema

Fourteen floors above Sliema inside the Preluna Hotel, the lift opens and essentially deposits you straight into The Skyroom. Then you notice the view.

Huge windows wrap around the bar, with Mediterranean blue by day and something considerably moodier after dark. Inside it’s leather, brass, marble, smart uniforms and proper hotel-bar energy. If Don Draper and Thomas Shelby arranged drinks in Malta, somebody would eventually send them here.

The cocktail menu moves between classics, Prohibition-era drinks, newer signatures and more playful serves, while jazz and blues nights give the place another reason to linger. It’s one of those bars that can do polished and theatrical without making either feel compulsory.
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