Written this afternoon — 4 October
The list
Rewritten in the kitchen each afternoon, after the boats and the village van. Most tables take the sequence and never look at this page. If you want three plates and a carafe, here is what there is.
The sequence
22 plates · €34 a head · two people minimum
Fish €40 · From the garden €28
Cold meze
Taramosalata
Cod roe whipped with yesterday's bread, lemon, oil
Tzatziki
Strained yogurt, cucumber pressed dry, garlic, mint
Melitzanosalata
Aubergine burnt on the foukou, tahini, garlic
Olives, cracked with a stone
Coriander seed, lemon peel, a week in the jar
Lountza and hiromeri
Smoked loin and wine-cured ham, sliced thin
Koupepia
Vine leaves off our own canopy, rolled at nine
Hot meze
Halloumi, charred
Down from the mountain village at dawn, wild mint
Kolokithokeftedes
Courgette and anari, fried in the pan, lemon
Salingaria
Snails stewed in wine and tomato, bread for the sauce
Keftedes
Pork and mint, potato in the mix, tomato
Louvi with chard
Black-eyed beans, oil, half a lemon squeezed over
From the sea
Whole fish is sold by weight and what is there depends entirely on the morning. Ask.
Octopus on charcoal
Hung two days first, vinegar, oil, oregano
Red mullet, whole
Salted, grilled, nothing else on the plate
Picarel, fried
Eaten whole, head and all, with lemon
Calamari
Cut thick, floured, thirty seconds, aioli
From the foukou
Souvla
Pork shoulder, salt and lemon, ninety minutes
Sheftalia
Pork and parsley in caul fat, straight over embers
Kleftiko
Sealed in the clay at midnight, opened at seven. Twelve portions
Ofto — Sundays only
Whole lamb and potatoes buried at dawn. Book it
Village classics
Afelia
Pork in red wine and cracked coriander seed
Kolokasi with pork
Taro, celery, lemon. Winter only, and worth waiting for
Yiouvetsi
Lamb and orzo baked in the bakery oven, kefalotyri
Moussaka
Maroulla's, and she will not write it down
Sweets
Anari with carob syrup
And a plate of fruit, which is the real dessert
Mahalepi
Set with rosewater, served very cold
Baklava, walnut
Made on Fridays, honey from Statos
To drink
Xynisteri, by the carafe
Vouni villages, 900 metres up. Cold and saline
Maratheftiko, by the glass
The island's difficult red. Six open across a week
Zivania
From a still in Pano Panagia. Arrives with the fruit, unasked
Commandaria
Sun-dried grapes, oxidised in cask. A thimble
If you take only three things
03 — 22
Sheftalia
12.00The plate people describe to other people afterwards.
With — Maratheftiko, by the glass
Kleftiko
22.50Twelve portions a night. Ask for it when you book, not when you sit.
With — a carafe of the Vouni Xynisteri
Anari, carob
6.00Two ingredients, both from within twenty kilometres.
With — Commandaria, a thimble
Καλώς ορίσατε — welcome to our table.