Method
Every competitor publishes an unexplained top ten. This is the working. Read it and you can disagree with a position on the same terms we arrived at it.
The six criteria
A pizzeria is scored out of 100. Each criterion is scored out of its own weight, so a perfect bake is 20 and a perfect room is 5. The total is the sum. It is computed, never entered by hand.
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Dough & crumb | 30 |
| Bake & char | 20 |
| Sauce & cheese | 20 |
| Toppings & sourcing | 15 |
| Value | 10 |
| Room & service | 5 |
| Total | 100 |
Dough & crumb — 30
Fermentation time and temperature, hydration, the structure of the crumb at the rim and at the centre, and whether the base holds its own weight at the ninth minute out of the oven. It carries the largest weight because it is the only component that cannot be bought in.
Bake & char — 20
Floor temperature, total bake time, and the distribution of char. Leoparding is assessed for evenness around the full circumference, not for quantity. Bitterness is a deduction. Consistency across visits is scored here.
Sauce & cheese — 20
Whether the tomato is cooked or raw, how it is seasoned, and how much water it releases under heat. Cheese is assessed on type, drainage and behaviour as the pizza cools.
Toppings & sourcing — 15
What is bought, from whom, and how far it travelled. A kitchen that names its supplier scores above one that does not.
Value — 10
The price of a margherita against the score of that margherita. Cheap and poor scores the same as expensive and good.
Room & service — 5
Deliberately the smallest weight. A good room cannot rescue a bad pizza, and it should not be able to move a position.
How visits work
- Minimum two visits before an entry is published.
- A margherita is ordered at every visit. It is the control.
- Visits are unannounced and paid for at full price.
- Every assessment carries the date of the most recent visit.
Ties
Two pizzerias on the same total are separated by dough, then by bake, then by the earlier visit date. An unexplained tie-break is the same failure as an unexplained ranking, so the order is stated here rather than resolved quietly.
Revisions
The ranking is a living page. When a revisit changes a total, the position changes with it and the move is recorded with a date and a reason on the change log and on the entry itself. Nothing is edited silently.
What we do not do
- No paid placements. No position in this list is for sale.
- No sponsored entries, no affiliate links to any pizzeria listed.
- No free meals, no press visits, no host comps.
- Display advertising funds the site. It is sold against pages, never against positions, and no advertiser is told what is coming.
- The weightings above do not change mid-year.
Corrections
Factual errors are corrected on sight. If a detail here is wrong, write to editor@bestpizzamalta.com and it will be fixed and dated. Disagreement with a score is not an error, and we will publish the disagreement rather than change the score.