The islands of the Cyclades are, for many of us, the most beautiful part of the country.
Greekness, as it is trusted over time through the alternations of white and blue, through the encounters of stone and sea, through the familiar smells that reach the nostrils from the kitchens of houses and restaurants, governments in the Cyclades.
They have ceased for years to be what was in the eyes of Elytis and other poets.
Life on the islands, with poetry, is like a choice of austerity in abundance, also in a Greek way: the fig, the cheese, the fencing on the burning rocks and the rastoni in the courtyards that spend the night cool and crisp.
Now, this austerity that is captured in the most aesthetic way in black and white photos, can ask for it by paying it generously in the gastronomic hangouts of the islands.
(If of course we find first where to stay this summer…)
The transition from the symbol to the sour cream led to a shocking appreciation of Greek gastronomy, renewed in their point of view and techniques, and served in unpretentious luxury dishes and saucers with charges, then, that do not correspond to their content.
Were you really anxious to taste and pay dearly for the orange salad with Botrini’s sword in the Santorini “Moon”?
The Cyclades are Athenianized and Athens becomes an island. As time goes on, the aesthetics are distinguished and create new hybrids of shops, they also appear from content.
Now, the one with the least knowledge understands: the more minimal, natural, austere a restaurant looks and looks in the menu, the more expensive the right to enjoy the χαρ simple joys of life will cost.
Despite the desire of chefs to democratize gastronomy, it is difficult for a twenty-five-year-old high gastronomy in Santorini or Mykonos, not to mention elsewhere.
What’s worse is the words that I can spell I often mistype. How the “others” go there, the rich, the tourists who take them.
In Athens and Thessaloniki, people living under 1,000 euros a month we could go to such a really good restaurant once.
Let that, and in “not-really-good” we can now eat most voices perfectly.
Taverns on the whole show a shocking pot and a masterful vote at very fair prices and in portions of everything that should satisfy us. No, they do not have cucumber gels and imaginative preparations that pop into our mouths like fireworks, but offer deeply delicious food.
Explosion of flavors and businesses in the Cyclades
THE Santorini This year it was flooded with garlic foam, Greek-Asian fusion (the gastronomic expansion of Asia in Greece has been progressive for years), eggplant jams and the like.
THE Mykonos wants to continue its cosmopolitan success. Its people come from all over the world and they know that they will approach their food and drink on the island of the Winds.
This year, Mykonos, gastronomically, had an international feeling, more than ever: Mykonos Social, Cove (inside the Aeonic Hotel), Ceresio 7, Athenagoras Kostakos Noema, Kensho-Psarou Lounge with Peruvian touch on Greek flavors and how many other arrivals…
Spaghetti that goes to imitate the village salad in the Italian Ceresio7 of Mykonos
In the new hotel “Mykonos No 5” the award-winning Michalis Marthas continues his course, developing a garden with aromatic and applied no waste practices. Global trends start or, at least, end in Mykonos, of course.
How much will you pay for a lamb saddle with artichoke cream and upside down milk pudding?
Nikos Karathanos sets up a revolutionary menu for the restaurant of the hotel “Kazarma Mykonos”: beluga lentils with tomato paste pesto, kataifi, feta and citrus vinaigrette, Kimolos oil with beef meatballs in red pepper broth and other red peppers
Tinos “sinks” more and more every year
In Tinos miracles really happen – at least gastronomically.
And these things happen for years. Tarsanas, the much-discussed Thalassaki and the camouflaged in Chora Pranzo, Bianco, Marathia and many others gave a baton this year (probably, they shared it) with ambitious landings.
Dimitris Katrivesis after last year’s “Thama”, this year opened “Bogan” in Chora.
It is a vermuteria housed in a beautiful 1800s building and will play, as is customary in Spain, with a wide variety of vermouth, cocktails and clever tapas.
In Chora and Santiago (from the team of the Athenians Lost Athens and Noah) with tapas, tequilas and cocktails.
Giorgos Stylianoudakis in Kalopsia plays with local products and attempts a single Cretan fusion, through dishes such as the local goat breze with potatoes and greens.
The list could be endless.
In Liostasi of Ios, this year the flavors are curated by Sotiris Evangelou, giving a delicious Greek color to the kitchen. Stamatis Marmarinos prepares the menu on the beach of “Far Out” in Mylopotas, with “quick good” flavors such as a “holiday” schnitzel in oil paste.
Nourloglou (eat his smash burgers in Kolonaki, break them) attacks the flavors in Salt also in Mylopotas.
Ten years ago, Mylopotas was the joy of a paid student from all over Greece. We lived 24 hours a day with alcohol, water and bad food from camping and we were happy.
Georgianna Chiliadaki and Nikos Roussos from Funky Gourmet, together with Periklis Koskinas of Cookoovaya created the menu of the popular “Beach House” in Antiparos. There, eggs are served for breakfast with shotguns and scallops.
Very Greek.
The modern Greek cuisine that will be served in the restaurant of the new hotel Cove Paros has the signature of Gika Xenaki, while the cocktails are curated by Vassilis Kyritsis (“The Clumsies”).
You will have the signature of Giannis Baxevanis this year at the restaurant “Aspro” and the new hotel “Paros Rocks” in Ambelas.
In Sifnos my favorite, George Samoilis of “Ω3” opened on the magical beach Seralia the “Cantina”, a restaurant with a flag of sustainability, which was almost entirely material of the island: fish fishing with ethical practices and meat from free range animals with nose-to-tail management.
In Syros, the restaurant “San Michali Food & Culture” of chef Alexandros Karakatsanis moves to the Vaporia district of Ermoupolis. The core of the restaurant is the wood stove from which you will get flavors with umami capabilities.
These upcoming ones do not compete with the fine ones, the traditional taverns, most of the time the value for money was very bad, but they help them raise the bar.
The question that may arise is “how high did it go we want and above all we endure;”. We have rewritten them: how much ceviche, how much tartar and how much beef in a hundred cuts can we stand?
On the other hand, why eat a gourmet dish that looks like a stew and not go directly to the source? Why should I eat the tomato spherical and not freshly cut from a vegetable garden?
How old would someone be considered to be content with a portion of well-fried fresh squid with french fries on the beach, accompanied by ouzo and bread?
The islands are turning into Athens and, to a degree, they needed it. But from the inventory to the alteration of the desired simplicity that the holidays demand is a lot of road cigarettes.
In ten years we may have found ourselves vacationing, what in our daily lives in Athens. Instead of envisioning more, more, and more eyes on the islands, maybe think of a new cultural center or animal shelter or public library.
Something tends to get saturated out there. Maybe it is already saturated.
Because evolution, in order to be evolution and not hypertrophy, must not have consciousness and a stop.
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