Valletta's Quietly Brilliant Food Scene

Valletta is small enough to cross in twenty minutes, but its food scene has quietly become one of the most exciting in the Mediterranean. Maltese cuisine is a delicious collision of Italian, North African, and British influences.

Start with pastizzi — flaky pastry parcels of ricotta or mushy peas — from a hole-in-the-wall. For dinner, find a place doing fenkata (slow-cooked rabbit) the traditional way.

Eat fresh fish by the water, drink local Maltese wine, and finish with an imqaret. The whole city smells faintly of warm pastry and sea air, which is exactly as good as it sounds.