Pillar 04 · Food & Where to Eat

Coffee in Żejtun: Where Locals Actually Go

Coffee in Maltese towns falls into two categories — the corner bars where men of a certain age have been ordering the same espresso for forty years, and the newer cafés that take third-wave coffee seriously. Żejtun has both. This is the local short list.

This article is a stub. Names and details to follow once we’ve sat at each counter long enough to be sure.

The two kinds of coffee place

The corner bar is a Maltese institution. Espresso machine, copies of l-orizzont and The Times of Malta on the counter, regulars who come for the same drink at the same time every day, a television above the bar showing whatever football is on. The coffee in these places ranges from acceptable to genuinely good; what they offer reliably is atmosphere and the sense that you’ve stepped into Żejtun’s actual daily life rather than a tourism version of it. They take cash, mostly, and the bill rarely tops two euros.

The newer cafés are a different proposition: properly extracted espresso, single-origin beans, sometimes brunch menus, table service. They have arrived in Żejtun in small numbers in the last few years and are worth knowing about if the coffee itself matters more to you than the atmosphere. Most are clustered around the parish square or just off it. [LOCAL FACT — Mattew to name 2–3 corner bars and 1–2 newer cafés with their current opening hours.]

How Maltese coffee orders work

The standard Maltese coffee menu maps onto the Italian one with a few quirks. Espresso is just espresso. Kapuċċino is cappuccino, and the Maltese version tends to come with substantially more milk than the Italian one. Kafé on its own usually means a regular coffee with milk; kafé fil-flixkun is the takeaway version. Tea is widely served (the British heritage shows here), often with milk added by default. Iced coffee is a summer staple. Most Maltese coffee places pair a coffee with something to eat — a pastizz, a biscuit, a slice of cake — and the cost remains low even now.

What this article will cover

  • Named corner bars and what to order at each
  • Named newer cafés and their bean roasters where known
  • Sunday-morning coffee culture in Żejtun
  • How to order in Maltese, the basic vocabulary
  • Where to find decaf and oat milk if you need them
  • The best place to read a book over coffee for an hour

Read more on this pillar

Part of our Food & Where to Eat pillar. Pair with breakfast in Żejtun, pastizzerias and bakeries, and where to eat near the parish square.

Mattew Cassar

Resident · Writer

Mattew writes zejtun.com from a flat above his grandfather’s old workshop on Triq San Girgor. He has lived in Żejtun for twenty-three of his thirty-one years.