What to Eat

Fava is the taste of Santorini — a smooth purée of yellow split peas grown in the island's dry volcanic soil and protected with PDO status. It is served warm, drizzled with olive oil and lemon and topped with raw onion or capers.

A dressed-up version, 'pantremeni' (married) fava, comes topped with sautéed onions and tomato. It appears on almost every taverna menu as a starter or meze, and it happens to be vegan.

Santorini grows a distinctive white aubergine, sweeter and less bitter than the usual purple kind, with few seeds. It turns up grilled, stuffed, or whipped into a creamy dip, and its mild flavour is prized across the island's kitchens.

Look for it as a grilled meze or a spread on bread — a simple showcase of the volcanic-soil produce Santorini is known for.

The Santorini cherry tomato (tomataki) is small, deep-red and remarkably sweet-sharp, its flavour concentrated by the island's arid volcanic soil — the vines are grown without irrigation, drawing moisture from the humid sea air alone. It carries PDO status and is one of the island's proudest products.

You'll taste it fresh in salads, cooked down into rich sauces, sun-dried, and — most famously — chopped into tomatokeftedes fritters. Much of the crop was once processed at the island's tomato-paste factories, one of which, at Vlychada, is now the Tomato Industrial Museum.

With the sea on the doorstep, seafood is central to Perissa's tavernas. Grilled octopus — tenderised and charred over coals — is the classic, alongside fried calamari, small fish, and whatever the day's catch brings.

Fresh fish is usually sold by weight and grilled simply with olive oil, lemon and oregano. Eat it at a table on the sand with a glass of Assyrtiko.

The Greek way to eat is mezedes — a spread of small plates to share: a horiatiki (Greek salad) of tomato, cucumber, olives and feta, dips like tzatziki and fava, dolmades, gigantes beans, fried cheese and grilled vegetables.

On Santorini the salad often carries a local twist, with caper leaves and the island's soft chlorotyri cheese. Order in rounds and let the evening stretch.

Santorini is one of Greece's great wine islands — its bone-dry, Assyrtiko-based whites carry the Santorini PDO, and its ungrafted vines, spared the phylloxera that wiped out most of Europe's, grow low in basket-shaped 'kouloura' to survive the wind. The star is Assyrtiko, a bone-dry white with bright acidity and a mineral, almost salty edge from the volcanic soil.

After dinner, try Vinsanto — a sweet amber dessert wine made from sun-dried grapes. Wineries around the island offer tastings if you want to go deeper.