Rubino — Restaurant in Valletta

Overall pretty terrible dining experience. If you don’t want to read all of the review, just go to Legligin around the corner instead where they have a daily tasting menu with Maltese cuisine and extremely fresh dishes and great service and ambience! DO NOT GO HERE.

We live in italy so we are pretty used to having good-great cuisine with relatively low par service and simple atmospheres. However, this place was lacking everything. First of all, of their “daily menu” which they claim to change every day, there were probably 2 or 3 actual Maltese dishes out of maybe 20? The rest were purely Italian dishes, and poorly executed at that. The waiter we had was quite uninterested and rude and sassy. We asked to be seated in another room besides the entrance since the AC was on 20 degrees and blasting on the table. we were seated about 10 cm away from the entrance to the kitchen which was extremely loud since they don’t have any type of door to block what goes on inside (the kitchen isn’t well kept, either.) on our other side was the bathroom door, which is apparently also where they have their wine fridges and dessert freezers, which was continually being opened by the staff to get food or beverages or by patrons using the restroom, and it smaller quite bad. At one point they closed off the bathroom to everyone and blocked the door with a chair behind our table. The manager, or whoever, read us the menu, word for word, without explaining and dish in particular, as if we couldn’t read it ourself. The manager can also be seen eating out of jars of food with a fork in the main dining room 🤢 When the waiter brought our bread and wine, he decided to take it upon himself to make room on our table and put my cellphone in my dish? Which was not only rude but also strange… We ordered one of the only Maltese dishes for a first course (as I said we live in Italy and don’t really want to eat sub par Italian food in other countries). After about 20 minutes, he comes up and says that they made the wrong pasta for us, it was his fault, would we be okay with eating the wrong one instead? To which we of course said no, and waited another 15 minutes for the correct pasta. It was edible. Our seconds came after about another 20 minutes, I had meatballs which were quite disgusting and gamey, tasted of horse/deer meat actually, and my partner ordered “fresh” calamari, which was absolutely not fresh and was full of sand. Overall, terrible food, terrible service, horrible atmosphere, and smelly restaurant as well. I’m quite confused as how this can be on the Michelin guide, as we’ve eaten in many Michelin restaurants before and this quality was absolutely below what we expected. To avoid, go to Legligin instead with proper maltese dishes and extremely fresh ingredients and a...

I’m writing this review while waiting for dessert — which I expect will be great. The food overall was a solid 8/10. The fish was unfortunately overcooked, but the wine was excellent. We were genuinely grateful to be welcomed in despite not having a booking.

That said, the service left a deeply unpleasant impression. The front-of-house (a man with tattoos) was extremely rude. When another Asian family arrived — clearly hoping for a seat — we even offered to share our table. He turned to them and asked, “Did you book?” When they replied, “Yes, today,” he snapped back, “Well, you’re too late. Goodbye,” and turned them away — including a father and his young child.

Later, he told us dismissively, “They wanted to book for five. Tonight? Forget it.” When I spoke at a normal conversational level, he abruptly interrupted: “You’re too loud. You get out or lower your voice.” When I asked for clarification, he repeated, “This is my restaurant. I decide.”

It was incredibly uncomfortable. I felt unwelcome, embarrassed, and frankly humiliated throughout the meal. Good food is meant to be shared and enjoyed. It should connect people — not make them feel small. Hospitality should be warm and inclusive, not arbitrary or hostile.

A Bib Gourmand designation reflects value and quality — but no accolade justifies making guests feel unwelcome. It’s a real shame, because the food deserves far better service to match.

That said, I want to acknowledge the gentleman attending to the first five tables near the front of the restaurant — I believe his name was Londrit (my apologies if I’ve misspelled it). He was absolutely lovely: kind, attentive, and gracious throughout. Thank you — you made our Rubino experience significantly better than it would...

We went because it was on the Micheline Bib list. In short just skip this place.

You could be in any local restaurant or a buffet anywhere in Malta, Spain, France or Italy. The kitchen is next to the tables which would be fine if they were not banging doors, tables and pots every 5 minutes.

Service was non-existent. Apart from the occasional nicety when they bring the food, there was no explanation of the meals or wines. Everything was written on a black board, the manager just came and read it to us. We asked for local wine pairing, he just gave us one name and asked “Do you want that one?”.

We took 6 dishes amongst 2 of us, eating half each. There wasn’t a single meal that stood out in flavor. The fried doughnut was over fried, the veal was over cooked, the pasta was not salted, the “restaurant special” dessert can be skipped, ordered the chocolate desert (although when we asked for them to bring another one, it came burned).

It is written on the site, on the door, on the Micheline guide that they accept Amex. When we got to pay “Sorry this machine doesn’t accept Amex.” We asked if there’s another machine. The answer: “No, Debit card or cash if you have”.

High hopes that deflated as the night went.

There is another Michelin rated restaurant called Guze down the road. In the area of Valletta that was...