Cuisine of Karpathos Island for gourmets. Places for dinner - best restaurants

Karpathos is a place where you can taste delicious Greek dishes and find a great number of taverns. Locals love to gather around the table with friends and family, enjoying food and drinks. All the taverns are full of people in the evenings. Many local taverns stand in their places for more than a dozen or even a hundred years and they are usually owned by the same family for several generations.

If you want to try the food, cooked according to the oldest traditions, look for taverns which are far from touristic spots. Do not expect the European service in taverns. Greeks have nowhere to hurry. If you enter a tavern and greet everyone, you will win the favour of the visitors. You can find horiatiki or village salad in every tavern. Locals never call it a Greek salad. It is usually made of olives, tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, onion and cheese. The salad is not always seasoned with oil, but you can find a bottle of olive oil on the table and add it to your dish.

Don’t pass by tzatziki, a local yoghurt salad with cucumbers and garlic. It is usually used as a sauce to pita or mutton. Pita plays an important role in Greek fast food. Souvlaki is a popular food on Chios. It was initially made of beef or pork, but now you can find souvlaki with chicken, seafood or vegetables. It can be found in psarotaverns. Moreover, you can try giro, souvlaki in a pita. Be sure to try paidakia, a dish with lamb chops and roast potatoes. Moussaka is a dish, every tourist should taste. It is a layered dish made with minced meat, egg-plants and potatoes with bechamel sauce. Pastitsio is a baked pasta dish with ground meat and bechamel sauce. You can find delicious dolma on Karpathos. It is a dish made of grape leaves and stuffed with meat. Be sure to try kokoretsi. It is a Greek lamb delicacy. Local soups are also very delicious. Avgolemono is a classic soup of chicken broth, egg yolks and lemon juice. Fasolada is a traditional Greek soup made with white beans. Kakavia is a traditional fish soup. Revithia is a traditional chickpea soup. Copyright www.orangesmile.com

The best fish dishes are served in psarotaverns. Don’t miss the chance to taste local stewed octopus, taramasalata and oysters. You can buy a fish and ask to cook it in a tavern. Fish is stewed, fried and boiled here, so choose what you like most. Moreover, cuttlefish, squid and mussel dishes are popular on the island. There can be «k» or «kat» indications in front of the name of the dish. These indications show that the dish was made of frozen imported fish. Moreover, you can buy fresh fish and ask to cook it in a tavern.

Coffee and juice are common soft drinks on the island. But tea is used only as a remedy for a cold. Local desserts are more eastern than western. The most popular are baklava and lokma. Keik me giaourti is a honey cake with yoghurt. Galaktoboureko is a traditional Greek pie. These two desserts are considered to be heavy food and Greeks usually eat it in winter. You should definitely taste local retsina, ouzo, grape rakia, metaxa cognac and local wine.