The story
Crafted with passion, served with love
A Table Worth Crossing the Channel For
Country Terrace sits in Għajnsielem, the village that greets you as the ferry from Malta docks at Mġarr harbour on the island of Gozo. That geography says something about the restaurant's character: it draws visitors making a deliberate trip, and locals who know their island well enough to keep coming back.
The restaurant earned Wine Spectator's Best of Award of Excellence in 2022 — a distinction reserved for wine programmes that go well beyond the basics, pairing serious depth and breadth of selection with the food on the plate. For a Mediterranean restaurant on a small island, that level of recognition signals genuine commitment to the table as a whole, not just the kitchen.
Mediterranean cuisine here means the full sweep of what that label can offer at its best: produce-led cooking shaped by the seasons, the sea, and the traditions of the central Mediterranean that Malta and Gozo have absorbed over centuries. Gozo's own larder — its salt, its cheeselets, its olive oil — sits at the heart of that tradition, and a restaurant with this kind of wine pedigree is the natural setting to explore it over a long lunch or an unhurried dinner.
The setting, as the name suggests, leans toward the open air. A terrace in this corner of Gozo means warm stone, wide skies, and the particular stillness that the smaller island holds even in summer.
Recognition