The best ice cream in Malta.

Let me qualify that; >maybe< the best price-quality-quantity combination is at Sottozero, by virtue of their gigantic portion sizes. But the best quality is definitely at Rivareno.

First of all, the staff knows ice cream (and is very friendly; I was a regular customer in the time I stayed in Malta, and always enjoyed our small chats). And the ingredients of the ice cream are sourced from where they should be; pistachio from the Greek islands (or Turkey), vanilla from Madagascar, et cetera. Combine a capable, professional staff, with high-quality ingredients, and you get wonderfully unique and absolutely delicious ice cream flavours.

Of course, any truly good ice cream place will have a delicious dark chocolate sorbet (yes, there are objectively correct answers to 'what is your favourite ice cream', and this should be one answer :P). Which Rivareno >definitely< has. And vanilla can easily be 'a bit bland', or 'too normal', but in a good ice cream place, vanilla is not at all some kind of 'default' or 'safe' flavour, no, there - like here - vanilla is also delicious and worthy of being a flavour on its own.

This already probably makes your ice cream place the best of any given city.

Rivareno goes much further. Pistachio is very hard to go wrong with, and as such, pistachio is usually good - Rivareno sells one of the best pistachios I've ever had, and Rivareno also sells a sorbet variant of pistachio which tastes completely different yet equally delicious! I loved trying them both at the same time, they are so different yet so good, love it!

But pistachio is, as I wrote, a safe flavour. Rivareno also has a lot of unique flavours, and each and every one of them is clearly designed by someone who >knows< ice cream. This is not 'oh, Kinder Bueno is hip, let's make ice cream of it' (and hey, nothing wrong with that, I enjoy that too), this is an art, and it shows. This is cremino and nocciola and many Italian words that must all translate to 'absolutely delicious' because that is the description they all have in common. Do check out Rivareno's website!

There are surprisingly many negative reviews of Rivareno, most of them noting the price/quantity, and as I wrote in the beginning; if you're not passionate about ice cream, you'd be better off at Sottozero for your money. And if you're not getting ice cream (but instead a waffle or something), I can easily imagine there are better places for that.

But if you love ice cream, you will find the best quality here, and you will definitely enjoy Rivareno's ice cream - so go! :)