We found Malta’s newest (not the highest, but so far, the nicest) rooftop bar by complaining about it.
We live next door. Every evening, from around six until sometimes midnight, the same music — a DJ set, a good one, the same beat drifting in through the windows. For weeks we assumed it was the neighbors. Then one night I went looking for where it was actually coming from, traced it up, and found it: a new rooftop bar twenty floors above St Julian’s, on top of the hotel at Mercury Towers.
So I called them and asked if they could bring it down a little. They did, immediately and without fuss. The next day I booked a table.
In fairness to Radio Rooftop, the noise isn’t really their doing. When there’s any wind at all we hear nothing. It’s one of those odd acoustic tricks Malta plays — sound travels strangely between these buildings, and on a still night it lands in our living room instead of staying on the roof.
And the place itself is good. Friendly, smiling waiters. Sushi that’s actually fresh. A bottle of brut prosecco. And the reason anybody comes: a genuine 360-degree view across the whole island.
We sat facing the Portomaso Business Tower — the blue-glass office block beside the Hilton, in the smart end of St Julian’s, which opened in 2001 and was Malta’s tallest building for nearly twenty years until this one overtook it. Looking at the old record holder from the roof of the new one, no wind, comfortable chairs, good vibes. That’s what you’re paying for, and it’s worth it.
Here’s what to know before you go.
The 360-Degree View, and the Best Time to See It
Radio has a view that goes the whole way around, which is less common than the phrase suggests — most rooftops have a lift shaft or a taller neighbor taking out part of the horizon.
Twenty floors is modest by the standards of the world’s tallest hotels with rooftop bars, but Malta is low and flat and very little is built above it. From up here you get St Julian’s below you, Sliema and the Valletta skyline down the coast, the open Mediterranean on the other side, and the interior of the island stretching away behind. On a clear evening you can pick out Gozo.
One thing to know if you don’t like heights. The edge is glass — thin, completely clear, floor to waist — so standing near it feels like there is less between you and St Julian’s than there actually is. It’s fine once you’ve sat down, but the first walk to the rail is a moment. A few of the panels were cracked when we were there. We didn’t ask.
On the question everyone asks: Radio is often described online as the highest bar in Malta. It isn’t, quite. TwentyTwo sits on Level 22 of the Portomaso Business Tower, a taller building along the coast, and Ánima occupies Level 33 of Mercury Tower itself. What Radio has is the clearest all-round view of the three, at an hour when there’s still light, and without a nightclub dress code.
Go for sunset. The bar opens at 18:00 and the two hours after that are the best of it. Later on it turns into something else — DJs, louder, a dressier crowd. That’s fine too, but the view is the reason to come and you want light for it.
Mercury Towers: What Zaha Hadid Actually Built in St Julian’s
Mercury Towers is worth a few minutes of attention before you get in the lift.
It is not one building but several. The tall one — Mercury Tower, 122 metres, the tallest building in Malta — is residential, and it is not the one you are drinking on. Radio sits on top of the shorter tower beside it, the twenty-floor block housing ME Malta.
Between and beneath them are the piazza, the mall and the old Mercury House. The complex was designed by Zaha Hadid Architects — one of the last projects Hadid signed off personally before she died in 2016, and the practice’s second job for ME by Meliá after ME Dubai. Developed by J. Portelli Projects, it took until 2023 to finish.
The shape is the part people notice. The tower turns partway up, a twist through the middle of the building that isn’t decoration: it swings the upper floors around to face the sea and gives the rooms better orientation and shading than a straight block would have managed on the same footprint. From the ground it reads as a single gesture. From inside, it’s why your view is pointed where it is.
The base is the more unusual bit. Rather than clearing the site, the 19th-century Mercury House — the old telecoms building the whole development takes its name from — was kept and restored at street level, with the tower rising behind it, and Cold War-era vaults underneath were retained as part of the structure. Around it, the practice laid out a public square and around 25,000 square metres of shops and restaurants, in a district that had never been planned so much as accumulated.
It has not been uncontroversial. The project drew objections over its scale in Paceville, questions were raised about the consultancy that had drafted the area’s public master plan also working on the development’s engineering reports, and its financing has been picked over locally for years. None of that is visible from Level 20, but it’s part of the story of how the building got there.
If this sort of thing interests you, we’ve also written about the most beautiful and best-designed bars in the world.
Radio Rooftop Menu Review: What to Order and What It Costs
The kitchen does Japanese sharing plates with Maltese ingredients threaded through, and the menu is more interesting than a rooftop bar needs to be. There is a proper sushi counter, an izakaya section, and — thankfully — no fries anywhere on it. The sides are yaki-meshi fried Japanese rice (€8.50), yaki udon noodles and miso aubergine katsu.
Our order barely changes:
‘Yaki’ Gyoza. Pork and shiitake, ginger, soy, and Gozo honey. The Gozo honey is a small thing, but it’s the kind of detail that shows the kitchen knows where it is. There’s a prawn and white fish version, ‘Ebi’ Gyoza if you want the lighter one.
Sashimi Selection, 10 pieces — €38. We take it all salmon. It isn’t the standard of a specialist counter — for that you want somewhere like Sushi Masa in Singapore — but for a rooftop in Malta it’s well above what it needs to be. If you’d rather have the range, the same €38 buys you the selection across salmon, hamachi, akami, o-toro and sea bass, and the Nigiri Selection is the same size and price.
If there are more of you, the Radio Sushi Platter is 36 pieces at €98 — sashimi, nigiri, Samurai Roll, Radio Dragon Roll and Salmon Maki. Allow 20 to 30 minutes; they make the rolls to order.
Worth knowing about elsewhere on the menu: Radio Bar Oysters at €9.50 a piece with pickled red onion and red yuzu hot sauce, Bluefin Tuna Tataki, and a local sea bass tiradito with sea grapes and passion fruit. At the top end there’s an A5 Wagyu sirloin at €107.
The €65 Izakaya Menu Is Better Value Than the À La Carte
The Izakaya Experience at €65 per person runs daily from 19:00 to 23:00, minimum two people. You choose five dishes across the cold and hot sections — nigiri, sashimi, the Samurai Roll, teriyaki salmon, prawn tempura, the duck bao, the gyoza, the beef short rib harumaki — with steamed rice and a milk chocolate mousse included.
Order those five à la carte and you’re well past €65. If you’re eating properly rather than picking at something alongside a drink, take the set menu.
Cocktails, Mocktails and the Maltese Wine List
Cocktails are Japanese-leaning, named in Japanese, and priced from €12 to €28.
The house showpiece is Brian’s Rekka at €28 — milk-clarified Tottori Japanese whisky with raisin, apricot and burnt orange, and the only drink on the list at that price. Below it things are reasonable by rooftop standards: Byakuren (sake, triple sec, lychee, jasmine), and Nagasaki and Benitsuyu.
Mocktails are just €10 and are treated seriously — the Ryokuei has fresh wasabi and wasabi tonic in it.
By the standards of the rooftop and cocktail bars we’ve drunk in around Bangkok, the list is shorter and less adventurous, but the pricing is far gentler than a view like this usually commands in Europe.
Shorter than you’d expect, in fact. We counted the drinks menu properly: more than 390 positions in total, and ten cocktails and four mocktails is a very short creative list. The thing the bar markets itself on — signature cocktails — is the smallest section on the menu, while the wine program is the size of a serious restaurant’s.
There are 212 wines, including whites and reds by the bottle across eleven countries, alongside 22 gins and whiskies with nine Scottish single malts and seven Japanese. You can even try a sparkling tea from Lithuania.
The Maltese wines are the best value on the list. By the glass: Marsovin’s ‘1919’ White, Meridiana’s ‘Isis’ Chardonnay, ‘Cassar de Malte’ Brut, and the ‘101 Rosé’ Brut at €17. Maltese sparkling costs a good deal less than the champagne and is the more interesting order up here.
And one of the most popular Maltese beer Cisk is €4.50, which is roughly what a Cisk costs at sea level.
One practical note: you can pay with MeliáRewards points, at 250 points to €1.
Our Review: Is Malta’s Radio Rooftop Bar Worth Good?
Yes — and not only for the view, though that’s the obvious part. It’s Malta from an angle you have almost certainly never seen it from, even if you live here.
The rest of it is the atmosphere. After dark, with the music going, the sashimi and the cocktails on the table and a well-dressed crowd around you, it stops feeling like Malta at all and starts feeling like a rooftop in an Asian city — Singapore, more than anywhere. That’s an odd thing to find in St Julian’s, and it’s most of the appeal.
Will you go back is a different question (we will), and depends on what you want out of an evening.
It’s a hotel rooftop and it feels like one. Polished, international, and pretty much the same as the other Radio bars if you’ve been to one of those. The menus give it away — the printed sushi and mains pages still say Radio Rooftop Bar, ME Madrid and ME Milan down the side.
What makes this one different is where it is. Directly below you is Paceville, which is the roughest part of St Julian’s, and around that is the rest of the island all at once. Sitting above all of it in a Zaha Hadid tower with a glass of Maltese sparkling is a strange combination, and two years ago you couldn’t do it here at all.
Get there around 18:30, order the gyoza and the sashimi, and stay while the light goes. If you want the quiet version of Malta afterwards, Casa Bonavita is the other end of the same island.
Radio Rooftop Malta: Address, Opening Hours and Booking
Radio Rooftop is on Level 20 of ME Malta, in the Mercury development on Gort Street, St Julian’s, STJ 3202. It opens at 18:00 every day, closing at 23:00 from Sunday to Thursday and at midnight on Friday and Saturday. The izakaya sharing menu runs from 19:00 to 23:00 daily and needs a minimum of two people.
You do not have to be a hotel guest. Book ahead for Friday and Saturday. Check menus on their website at radiorooftopmalta.com.
