ALMYRIKI
CONTEMPORARY GREEK CUISINE
Almyris Beach, Corinth
+30 2741 034230
€50-75 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating, restaurant by the sea
On Almyris Beach, just a few minutes from Loutra Oreas Elenis, Kostas Babalikis, a cook with knowledge and solid experience in restaurant and major hotel kitchens, including a stint at the Lytrivis brothers’ Edodi, presents a contemporary Greek cuisine focused on fish, as the restaurant’s wave-lapped location demands. He personally oversees his ingredients, secures good fish, sources vegetables from his father-in-law’s vegetable garden, chooses Greek products from small producers, and clearly loves both experimentation and his work.
ANAMA
CONTEMPORARY GREEK CUISINE
Pedestrian street, Gialova, Messinia
+30 698 2257869
www.anamarestaurant.gr
€75-100 per person
Open from Easter to October and on winter weekends
Restaurant with outdoor seating
Chrysanthos Karamolegkos is one of Greece’s most important chefs and is credited with making a huge contribution to the establishment of contemporary Greek cuisine. In this wonderful seaside, industrial space in Gialova, once a raisin factory, he has rediscovered his best self and created a restaurant of very high standards. Now living here permanently, he is constantly discovering ever more interesting local products and producers. Armed with his inexhaustible creativity and remarkable talent for flavour combinations, he transforms them into a cuisine full of flavour explosions, contrasts and delicious harmony, one that is well worth trying for anyone in the wider area.
ARMYRA BY PAPAIOANNOU
FISH RESTAURANT
Pilos, Costa Navarino
+30 27230 97186, +30 27230 97000
www.armyrarestaurants.gr/el/
€75-100 per person
Open from April to October
Restaurant with outdoor seating, private parking or valet service
Giorgos Papaioannou’s school of austere, ingredient-led fish cookery is a guarantee for the kitchen at Armyra in Costa Navarino. Faithfully following this distinctive pattern, where simplicity in the handling of ingredients and high technique on the grill and in the pan take centre stage, it once again rises to the occasion.
ASPASIA
MODERN BISTRO
Stavri, Mani Peninsula
+30 2733 053158, +30 698 147 7561
www.aspasiarestaurantmani.com
€50-75 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating
In a courtyard with Mount Sagias as its backdrop, the tables of Stavriani Zervakakou’s restaurant are set in the small mountain village of Stavri in Laconian Mani. The reed-covered roof and trees offer shade, while the grill, stationed in one corner of the courtyard, fills the air with tempting aromas. The Maniot chef has made it her main aim to introduce guests to the traditions of the region’s cuisine. Ingredients therefore come from foraging and from select producers across Mani, alongside carefully chosen products from the rest of Greece. The menu changes almost daily, and the flavours are deep, substantial and touched with creativity.
BRASSERIE DE LA BAY
EUROPEAN CUISINE
Mandarin Oriental Costa Navarino, The Bay Course
+30 2723 099888
www.mandarinoriental.com/en/costa-navarino/messenia/dine/brasserie-de-la-bay
€75-100 per person
Open from April to October
Restaurant with outdoor seating, parking
In a beautiful setting overlooking the golf course, Bertrand Valegeas has created an international French brasserie that serves the very definition of high-level comfort food. From the outstanding lunchtime burger to the superb, deeply indulgent cordon bleu, the food here is simply delicious.
DEX.SILO.01
GREEK HAUTE CUISINE
Dexamenes Seaside Hotel, Kourouta Beach, Amaliada
+30 2622 025999
www.dexamenes.com/food-drink
€75-100 per person
Particularly charming setting
This is a unique restaurant concept by Greek standards, with tables set inside an imposing 1920s wine tank, its natural concrete tones marked in places by reddish-brown oxide. Consultant chef Gikas Xenakis and executive chef Stavros Kousis have carried traditional dishes of the region into their future form, creating flavours rooted in tradition, but expressed in a contemporary way. The cellar is excellent too, with around 350 wine labels from around the world.
EVIVA
MEAT RESTAURANT
Eparchiaki Odos Vrachatiou-Nemeas 255, Vochaiko, Corinth
+30 2741 056531
€25-50 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating, very good wine list
In the central square of Vochaiko in Corinthia, Eviva, run by brothers Dimitris and Giorgos Mavronasios, has found its place. They first opened their taverna in 2013 and, four years later, decided to develop it into a meat-focused restaurant. Alongside the traditional lamb chops came breeds and cuts from Greek and international farms, aged in-house for 40 to 60 days and grilled with nothing more than a sprinkling of quality salt. “Good wine elevates the meal,” says Giorgos Mavronasios, who continues to enrich an already impressive wine list, both in variety and vintages, from the Greek and international vineyard.
ELIES
TRADITIONAL GREEK CUISINE
Kardamyli, Mani, Elies Guesthouse
+30 27210 73140, +30 27210 73021
www.elieshotel.gr/el/estiatorio
Up to €25 per person
Open from May to October
Restaurant with outdoor seating, private parking or valet service
Set within an olive estate, this is a traditional restaurant of high standards, with a homely atmosphere that also comes through in the food. Once again, it stands out for the quality of its cooking. The stews and, more broadly, everything that comes out of the oven deserve sustained applause, not least Fani’s unforgettable moussaka, one of the finest examples of its kind currently being served anywhere in Greece.
FOINO
CONTEMPORARY GREEK CUISINE
Ipapantis 35, Kalamata
+30 6940886536
€50–75 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating , very good wine list
The elegant wine restaurant opened in Kalamata by chef Giorgos Choraitis and his partner, sommelier Dimitra Poulopoulou, after several years working abroad, has the atmosphere of a London modern bistro. Its kitchen is based on local, seasonal ingredients and solid technique, offering a creative take on Greek cuisine without being confined by the country’s borders, as it is enriched by the chef’s international experience. The wine list, perhaps the most extensive in the city, is also very interesting.
IOSIF
TRADITIONAL GREEK CUISINE
Magouliana, Gortynia, Arcadia
+30 27950 82359, +30 694 462 1973
€25-40 per person
Open Friday and Saturday 13:00-22:00, Sunday 13:00-19:00
In Magouliana, the highest village in the Peloponnese at 1,360 metres, Iosif is an old butcher’s taverna that keeps Arcadia’s deep-rooted meat-eating tradition alive. It began around 65 years ago as both a butcher’s shop and a taverna, and today continues with the third generation of the family at the helm. Most of the meat comes from animals they rear themselves, and the kitchen revolves around the grill, the casserole dish and handmade flavour: kokoretsi, kontosouvli, juicy sausages, liver and offal, lamb chops, lamb or goat slow-cooked in the casserole, lamb with olive oil and oregano, and a superb firm feta of their own production. An authentic Arcadian table, modest in intention and deep in flavour.
KALI KARDIA
TRADITIONAL GREEK CUISINE
Kalamata-Areopoli Provincial Road, Nomitsi 240 24
+30 27210 74212
€25-30 per person
Open all year round
In the stone-built village of Nomitsi, with its cobbled lanes, Byzantine churches and traces of a medieval settlement, Kali Kardia has been around for roughly 60 years. Siblings Tonia and Christos Xerovasilas, the third generation at the helm of the taverna, keep its traditional character alive, while the view over the Messinian Gulf and the verdant mountains sets the tone.The kitchen remains deeply Greek and Maniot, with an emphasis on ingredients: vegetables mainly from their own garden, lambs from a supplier in Areopoli, clear deliciousness on the grill, and very strong performances in the frying pan and oven too.
KAVOS 1964
FISH RESTAURANT
Isthmia, Corinth
+30 2741037906
www.kavos1964.gr
€50-75 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating, restaurant by the sea, private parking or valet service
A few oil lamps and the glow of the flames rising from the glowing coals of the grill. That, they say, was how Kavos was lit when it first opened in Isthmia in 1964. More than half a century later, Tasos Vlassis’ exceptionally well-kept fish taverna, at the beginning of the old Corinth-Epidaurus road, earns two FNL stars this year, confirming the rare consistency and gastronomic precision with which it handles fish. The outstanding ingredients, the grilling that respects the nature of each fish, the clarity of flavour and the effortless elegance of the cooking compose a seafood experience of substance, balance and admirable stability.
KREOPOLION 29
MEAT RESTAURANT
Faron Street 29, Kalamata
+30 2721028249
€35-50 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating
Nikos Maniateas took over his father’s traditional butcher’s taverna and gradually brought it to the point he had imagined, consolidating its place at the FNL awards. Kreopoleion 29 is one of the most interesting meat restaurants we have encountered on our travels. It is elegant and modern, has a sure hand in the kitchen, searches deeply into local ingredients, like all the interesting restaurants in the city, and has a rare advantage: a vertical logic. From the small livestock unit to the butcher’s shop and finally the restaurant, Kreopoleion 29 has an element of uniqueness that makes it stand out.
MANNA HOTEL-RESTAURANT
CONTEMPORARY GREEK CUISINE
Korfoxilia Magouliana, Mountain Arcadia
+30 2710 309009
www.mannaarcadia.gr/el
€50-75 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating
The restaurant of the highly aesthetic Manna hotel looks out over the fir forest of Mainalo, which is presumably why its menu, bearing the signature of chef Athinagoras Kostakos, connects in its own idiomatic way with the nature of mountainous Arcadia. Using local ingredients of exceptional quality, the chef presents the flavours of Peloponnesian cuisine through a more contemporary lens, executed, of course, with the appropriate skill by chef de cuisine Michalis Hantzos. An interesting wine list and impeccable service contribute to the quality of the dining experience.
MOURTOUKALIS - TA BAKALIARAKIA
TRADITIONAL GREEK CUISINE
Karaiskaki 30, Argos
+30 27510 68038
Up to €25 per person
Closed in summer
A classic family taverna with almost half a century of history. Well-cooked dishes of deep flavour, made with carefully chosen ingredients, in an area not particularly known for good food. The must-orders are the salt cod and the excellent skordalia.
MPLE KANARINI
GASTROTAVERNA
Kritis 34, Kalamata
+30 27210 43075
Up to €25 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating
A surprising modern cookshop in Kalamata, opened in the summer of 2021 by Kostas Vassiliadis, nephew of the also award-winning Kostas Vassiliadis of the well-known Stou Kosta. This cook is anything but ordinary and, although he could quite comfortably operate in more creative and ambitious arenas, he chose to return to his roots, to his home place, to the blessed land of Messinia, and to do whatever he could. Only what he can do is neither little nor easy to overlook. Quite the opposite.
OLIVIERA
CONTEMPORARY GREEK CUISINE
Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino
+30 27230 99888
www.mandarinoriental.com/el-gr/costa-navarino/messenia/dine/oliviera
€100-140 per person
Open from April to November
Restaurant with outdoor seating, private parking or valet service, very good wine list
The leading Mandarin Oriental has a tradition of strong F&B, and its Costa Navarino hotel is no exception. It also has the advantage of a brigade led by the outstanding Bertrand Valegeas, who has found his best self here and excels across each of the hotel’s different restaurant projects. The logic of sustainability is visible throughout, the search for local ingredients is impressive, and an ever-evolving vegetable garden supplies the restaurants with unique produce. Oliviera is the hotel’s main restaurant and its theme is Greek. Particularly on the dinner menu, Valegeas, together with chef Spyros Georgakis, delivers a masterclass in how Greek cuisine can evolve with substance, excellent technique and inspiration, without resorting to fanfare or deconstruction. Add to this a very good wine list and impeccable service
OUZERI SKOTADIS
FISH RESTAURANT
Dimokratias Avenue 46, Aegina Waterfront, Aegina
+30 22970 24014
€50-75 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating
A culinary landmark in Aegina with plenty of history, Ouzeri Skotadis has the substance of an old ouzeri, the immediacy of an island table and a kitchen that is evolving with confidence around Greek fish and seafood. From the classic flavours one expects from this kind of place to more contemporary dishes, the raw material at Skotadis shines with freshness and the execution meets high expectations.
PARÁFRASI BY CTC
CONTEMPORARY GREEK CUISINE
Navarino Dunes, Costa Navarino, Romanos Messinia
+30 27230 97165
€75-100 per person
Open from April to October
Paráfrasi by CTC is the most outward-looking and playful extension of Alexandros Tsiotinis’ gastronomic thinking at Costa Navarino. The chef takes familiar Greek flavours, memories and techniques and transfers them into a more immediate, bright and comforting framework, with the care and precision that define CTC. Here, Greekness gains rhythm, humour and gastronomic intensity, without losing its recognisable flavour identity.
PARELIA
FISH RESTAURANT
W Costa Navarino, Navarino Waterfront, Pylos, Messinia
+30 27230 97000
€75-100 per person
Open from April to October
At Parelia, Nikos Billis turns the kitchen of W Costa Navarino towards the sea, with a proposition grounded in Messinia, the Ionian Sea and the Messinian Gulf. With Billis as executive chef and Alexandros Mpountas as chef de cuisine, the restaurant works around fish and seafood with a contemporary Greek perspective, local products and a clear flavour focus, resulting in a cuisine that is bright, direct and well crafted, perfectly suited to W’s seaside setting.
PIQANTRO
MEAT RESTAURANT
Navarino Hills, Costa Navarino, Pylos, Messinia
+30 27230 97000
Restaurant with outdorr seating, Hotel restaurant, Grill-focused restaurant
At Piqantro, Nikos Billis brings the energy of fire and the grill to the spectacular landscape of Navarino Hills, building a meat restaurant with a cosmopolitan yet essentially Mediterranean character. The kitchen combines the Iberian logic of charcoal and premium cuts with products and flavours from Messinia.
PHEIA
TRADITIONAL GREEK CUISINE
Agios Andreas, Katakolo
+30 26210 41401
www.pheia.com/el
€25-50 per person
Open from March to October
Housed in the hotel of the same name, this restaurant serves traditional Greek cuisine right by the water, with a view of Marathonisi in Zakynthos. Maria Giannopoulou carefully selects her ingredients, works with specific fishing boats and has her own vegetable garden. Its greatest asset, however, is the flavour, as every dish brings back some of our most beautiful childhood memories.
PIZZA SAPIENZA by DANIELE CASON
EUROPEAN CUISINES
Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino
+30 27230 99888
www.mandarinoriental.com/en/costa-navarino/messenia/dine/pizza-sapienza-by-daniele-cason
€75-100 per person
Open from May to October
Restaurant with outdoor seating
Tokyo’s The Pizza Bar on 38th has caused a global stir with chef Daniele Cason’s inventive yet technically impeccable pizzas. The concept has been transferred here with complete success, offering an omakase menu experience on comfortable stools around the wood-fired oven, with two seatings of 11 guests at 19:00 and 21:00. You will try a succession of different pizzas, each one better than the last, as the classics give way to seasonal and more creative creations. Their common foundation is the exceptional, airy dough, made from a variety of flours and matured for 72 hours.
SOULIS
TRADITIONAL GREEK CUISINE
Saronikou Street 11, Agioi Theodoroi
+30 27410 67236
€25–50 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating
A small, charming taverna with a sui generis way of operating, which is why you should definitely call before setting off. The menu is spare and austere, but everything on it is excellent. Exceptional tomatoes and kagianas, outstanding chips and burgers. On national holidays, the salt cod with skordalia is faultless. To finish, a selection of homemade spoon sweets.
STERNA
EUROPEAN CUISINES
Ag. Stefanos, Monemvasia, Kinsterna Hotel
+30 2732066300
www.kinsternahotel.gr
€50-75 per person
Open from June to September
Restaurant with outdoor seating, private parking or valet service
Under the high-level supervision of Apostolos Trastelis and Arnaud Bignon, chef Giorgos Hapsas’ cooking at this charming restaurant wins impressions at the beautiful restaurant of Kinsterna Hotel, with a contemporary menu that makes the most of the produce from the hotel’s garden. The wine list is also worth your attention.
STOU KOSTA (VASILEIADIS)
TRADITIONAL GREEK CUISINE
Kalamata, Bournias (behind the Industrial Area)
+30 2721083957, +30 6984028266
Up to €25 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating
On the outskirts of the city, in the Bournias area, quite literally in the middle of nowhere, Kostas Vassiliadis’ lunchtime-only cookshop honours Greek culinary tradition with dishes that possess deep deliciousness, sparkling ingredients and clear, substantial flavours that know how to soothe the soul of anyone seeking a cooked-food balm. From soutzoukakia and cheese pie with local cheeses to beef in tomato sauce with twisted hilopites and their own take on moussaka, the kitchen’s performance is more than noteworthy.
TAHIR
FUSION & ETHNIC
Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino
+30 27230 99888
www.mandarinoriental.com/el-gr/costa-navarino/messenia/dine/tahir
€75-100 per person
Open from April to November
Restaurant with outdoor seating, private parking or valet service
The restaurant beside the main pool transforms in the evenings into the best Lebanese restaurant in the country. It offers an expressive, accomplished Levantine cuisine full of aromas, flavours, authenticity and creative touches, such as its superb cherry kebabs. The silky hummus or the excellent manti alone make a visit worthwhile.
THE PRIVATE KITCHEN
INTERNATIONAL HAUTE CUISINE
Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino
+30 27230 99888
www.mandarinoriental.com/el-gr/costa-navarino/messenia/dine/the-private-kitchen
Over €140 per person
Open from April to November
Restaurant with outdoor seating, private parking or valet service, excellent wine list
The almost private gastronomic restaurant at Mandarin Oriental, Costa Navarino follows a Japanese fine-dining logic, with a comfortable, luxurious bar, 16 plush armchair-stools around an open kitchen and a private terrace-lounge. This is Bertrand Valegeas’ playground, the space in which he expresses himself freely, goes wild, and also satisfies the whims of the most special guests, who can book the entire restaurant. On the evenings it is open to the public, Valegeas and chef Stella Asimakopoulou propose a luxurious, creative menu where his virtuosity meets the finest ingredients from the region and beyond, creating the ultimate gastronomic experience one can have in the Peloponnese.
VERSALLIES
CONTEMPORARY GREEK CUISINE
Evaggelistrias Street 46, Kalamata
+30 27210 81858
€25-50 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating
A surprising modern restaurant in Kalamata. These days, it operates only at lunchtime, when it takes on the feel of a traditional mageireio. Yet chef-owner Giannis Koumanis often lets his creative side run free, drawing inspiration from whatever excellent produce he has found that same day at the local market. The result is an idiosyncratic cuisine, marked by bold and highly successful combinations, technique and originality.
VILLA INCOGNITO
TRADITIONAL GREEK CUISINE
1 Deligianni Street & 43 Tasou Sechioti Street, Tripoli, Arcadia
+30 2710 222111
www.villaincognito.gr/en/
€25-50 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating
Sotiris Kouros and Yakinthi-Katerina Tyrovola-Dagre opened Villa Incognito in the centre of Tripoli in 2012, continuing in their own way a family story that began with Sotiris’ grandfather. Returning from America to Arcadia, he bought a hut and turned it into an inn, where horses could rest and travellers could taste grandmother Marigo’s meze. Today, Villa Incognito keeps that memory alive through a thoughtful, deeply Greek cuisine rooted in Arcadia, the flavours of home and a sense of authentic hospitality and care.
ZERZOVA
TRADITIONAL GREEK CUISINE
Markou, Gortynia Arcadia
+30 693 284 7358
€25-50 per person
Open all year round
Restaurant with outdoor seating
A mountain taverna with a wide, wonderful view stretching from the plain of Megalopolis to Taygetos and the Ionian Sea. It is one of the few in the entire country that could claim the title of guardian of local tradition, given that the cuisine it offers is local and purely traditional. Its greatest asset, of course, is that most of the ingredients come from their own herd, their own vegetable garden or the surrounding nature. Giannis Angelakopoulos, a true forager, gathers greens, roots, bulbs, truffles and other mushrooms, and the excellent cook Vangelio Mavriki cooks them slowly, with knowledge and incomparable passion, or bakes them in the wood-fired oven. A noteworthy small cellar gives wine lovers the chance to pair their food with quality wines, including several from the region.
*The upward arrow next to the stars indicates restaurants that are performing at the upper end of their rating and are considered more likely to move up to the next rating level in a future evaluation.
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