Best Restaurants in Greece: A Luxury Traveller’s Guide to Eating Extraordinarily Well

Here is a confession that will likely get a travel writer’s press card revoked: Greece is not, first and foremost, about the food. Not traditionally. For decades, the received wisdom – repeated in guidebooks, on package holiday forums, and by well-meaning relatives who went to Kos in 1987 – was that Greece was a place you visited for the light, the history, the islands, the wine. The food was an afterthought. A bowl of olives here. A plate of grilled fish there. Pleasant enough. Perfectly fine. Not exactly the reason you booked the flight.

That received wisdom is now spectacularly, gloriously wrong.

Greece in 2025 is one of the most exciting food destinations in Europe. Athens has emerged as a city that serious eaters are finally taking seriously – Michelin stars, global award nominations, chefs returning from international kitchens to cook something deeply, defiantly Greek. The islands, never ones to be outdone, are following suit. What follows is a guide to eating extraordinarily well in Greece – from the Michelin-starred tables of Athens to the fish tavernas where the catch arrived that morning and the menu is whatever the owner feels like making. Both, in their own way, are essential.

The Fine Dining Scene: Athens Steps Up

The case for Athens as a serious fine dining destination rests on several pillars, and none of them are marble. The city’s restaurant scene has undergone a quiet revolution over the past decade – quiet, at least, from the outside. From the inside, it has been something more like a reckoning. A generation of Greek chefs trained abroad and came home. They brought technique. They brought ambition. And crucially, they brought an unwillingness to apologise for being Greek.

The result is a dining scene that manages to be both rooted and restless. Spondi, in the residential neighbourhood of Pangrati near the Panathenaic Stadium, represents the establishment end of this conversation – and does so without any of the stiffness that word implies. Spondi has held Michelin star recognition for over two decades, which is the kind of track record that commands genuine respect rather than mere acknowledgement. The tasting menu navigates Greek cuisine through a lens that is creative without being showy, drawing on Mediterranean flavours while keeping Greece firmly at the centre. The wine list, particularly its selection of assyrtiko – dry, crisp, and capable of making you rethink everything you thought you knew about white wine – is exceptional. Book well ahead. This is not a walk-in kind of evening.

For something newer and rather more electric, Pharaoh in the Exarcheia neighbourhood has become one of the most talked-about restaurants in Greece almost from the moment it opened. Chef Manolis Papoutsakis earned it a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the FNL Best Restaurant Awards placed it third in 2024 before upgrading it further in 2025. The approach is modern Greek – back-to-roots, feel-good, defiant in its refusal to be anything other than what it is. Exarcheia itself is not what you would call a typical luxury dining destination, which is precisely why eating here feels like discovering something rather than ticking something off.

Over in a beautifully preserved Neoclassical townhouse, CTC Urban Gastronomy provides a very different register. Chef Alexandros Tsiotinis – Michelin-starred, and very much aware of it in the best possible way – treats the plate as a blank canvas. The food is technically accomplished and visually considered, and the setting, all high ceilings and architectural elegance, gives the whole experience a gravity that feels earned.

Beyond Athens: Corfu and the Islands at the Table

It would be easy – and lazy – to treat Athens as the whole story. The islands have their own chapter, and in some cases it is the more interesting one.

Etrusco on Corfu is proof that fine dining outside the capital is not a contradiction in terms. Ranked second in the FNL Best Restaurant Awards 2024 and consistently recognised among the top restaurants in all of Greece, Etrusco has built its reputation on sophisticated, creative Mediterranean cooking that feels entirely at home on the Ionian island. Corfu has always had a slightly different energy from the Aegean islands – more Italian in its architectural bones, more lush in its landscape – and Etrusco reflects that particular character. Dinner here, ideally on a warm evening with a glass of something local, is the kind of meal that recalibrates your expectations of what island eating can be.

Across the broader island landscape, the best restaurants are often not the ones that shout loudest. The whitewashed taverna on Naxos with four tables and a handwritten menu. The family-run place on Hydra where the grilled octopus is exactly as good as it looks drying on the washing line outside. These are not accidents of charm. They are the product of ingredients so good that overcooking them is the only real risk.

Seafood, Harbourside: Varoulko Seaside

Piraeus is, technically, not Athens. The Athenians will be the first to tell you this, usually while recommending you eat there. Varoulko Seaside, overlooking the Mikrolimano Marina, is the kind of seafood restaurant that makes the harbour view feel almost secondary – which is saying something, because the view is very good indeed. The kitchen has held Michelin recognition continuously from 1993 to 2020, a span that covers multiple economic crises, a pandemic, and presumably several changes in what Michelin considers fashionable. Through all of it, Varoulko kept doing what it does: exceptional seafood, top-quality fresh ingredients, beautifully presented. The elegance here is restrained rather than theatrical, which suits the subject matter. Fish does not benefit from being fussed over.

Order the catch of the day. Whatever it is. This is not the moment to second-guess the kitchen.

Casual Dining and Hidden Gems: Where the Real Eating Happens

Not every meal in Greece needs a reservation three weeks in advance and a tasting menu. Some of the best eating happens in places that don’t have a website, a PR team, or indeed a sign you can read if you don’t speak Greek. This is feature, not bug.

Thes “Greek Creative Cuisine” in Athens occupies an interesting middle ground – casual in atmosphere, anything but in ambition. TripAdvisor’s Travelers’ Choice Awards: Best of the Best for 2025 ranked it eighth best casual dining restaurant in the world, placing it in the top one percent of all restaurant listings globally. The Greek creative cuisine approach means familiar flavours approached with genuine curiosity, and the result is food that manages to be both comforting and surprising. Not an easy balance to strike. Thes strikes it.

For the genuinely off-menu experience, head to any neighbourhood in Athens outside the obvious tourist corridor and look for the place that is clearly full of people who live nearby. The souzoukakia – spiced meatballs in tomato sauce – will be better than anything you have eaten that claims inspiration from them. The horiatiki salad, the village salad that every tourist orders and most restaurants treat as an afterthought, will, in the right hands, be a reminder that tomatoes can taste like tomatoes.

Food Markets: Where the Ingredients Tell the Story

To understand why Greek food tastes the way it does, spend a morning at the Varvakios Agora – the central market in Athens. It occupies a covered hall near Monastiraki and has been doing so, in various forms, since 1886. The meat section is not for the faint-hearted. The fish section, however, is extraordinary – a display of what the Aegean and Ionian produce that explains every great seafood dish you will eat during your trip. Fishmongers who have been here for three generations will tell you what is good today. Listen to them.

The surrounding streets are filled with spice merchants, olive oil sellers, and stalls selling dried herbs from the mountains – thyme, oregano, sage – that bear almost no resemblance to what is sold in supermarkets elsewhere in Europe. Bring an empty suitcase. Or at minimum, a large bag. You will fill it.

On the islands, morning markets are smaller and often more personal. On Crete in particular, the agricultural produce – honey, cheese, olive oil, wine – is so good that eating it with bread constitutes a meal rather than a snack. Crete takes its food seriously in a way that brooks no argument.

What to Order: The Dishes That Matter

Greece’s culinary canon is deeper than its international reputation suggests. Beyond the obvious – moussaka, souvlaki, spanakopita – there is a whole register of dishes that don’t travel well and are therefore best encountered in situ.

Stifado, the slow-braised meat stew with pearl onions, wine and spices, is the kind of dish that requires time and patience that no tourist restaurant can be bothered to provide properly. Find it in the right place and it is genuinely extraordinary. Kakavia – fisherman’s soup, essentially a Greek bouillabaisse – is similarly worth seeking out on the islands. Fava from Santorini, a smooth yellow split pea purée with nothing to do with broad beans despite the name, is a revelation when made with the actual local ingredient rather than a generic substitute. And trahanas, a fermented grain and yoghurt soup that sounds alarming and tastes wonderful, represents the kind of grandmotherly Greece that no amount of Instagram has yet managed to reach.

For dessert: loukoumades (honey-soaked doughnuts, eaten standing up from a paper bag, ideally), galaktoboureko (custard wrapped in crisp filo), and anything involving good Greek yoghurt and local honey. The yoghurt-and-honey combination sounds too simple to be as good as it is. It is, nonetheless, as good as it is.

Wine, Ouzo, and the Drinks That Define the Table

Greek wine deserves more respect than it tends to receive from people whose experience of it extends to resinated retsina drunk in the 1980s. Assyrtiko, the white grape variety grown primarily on Santorini, is one of the great white wines of the Mediterranean – mineral, high-acid, effortlessly elegant. Xinomavro from northern Greece produces reds that wine writers reach for Italian comparisons to describe, which is both accurate and slightly unfair. Agiorgitiko from Nemea is fuller, more immediately approachable, and the kind of red that disappears from the table faster than expected.

Both Spondi and Varoulko maintain wine lists that take these indigenous varieties seriously. Order accordingly.

Ouzo is, of course, unavoidable. Drink it the proper way: with ice, diluted with water until it turns cloudy, alongside mezedes, in the late afternoon. Never after a large meal. Never in a hurry. The Greeks did not invent the concept of sitting still and enjoying the moment, but they have perfected the practice. Tsipouro – a grape pomace spirit, rougher and more honest than ouzo – is the drink of the taverna interior, the kind of place where the television is showing football and no one is looking at their phone. It is very good indeed.

Beach Clubs and Casual Coastal Dining

Greece’s beach club scene has evolved considerably beyond the question of whether the sunbeds are clean. The high end of this category now encompasses full restaurant services, serious wine lists, and kitchens that would not embarrass themselves in a city context. Mykonos remains the benchmark – Nammos at Psarou Beach has been the reference point for a certain type of glamorous Mediterranean beach dining for years – but the format has spread. Santorini, Paros, Ios, and increasingly the less-visited islands of the Dodecanese all have options that allow for serious eating in sandy, salt-aired surroundings.

The formula is reliable: arrive before the heat peaks, eat something cold and seafood-adjacent, drink something cold and wine-adjacent, and rearrange your afternoon accordingly. Greece is very good at afternoons.

Reservation Tips and Practical Wisdom

For the top Michelin-starred restaurants – Spondi in particular – booking a minimum of two to four weeks in advance is not overcaution, it is basic logistics, especially in the summer months when Athens fills with travellers who have belatedly realised the city is worth their time. Pharaoh and CTC Urban Gastronomy similarly fill quickly; their online reservation systems are reliable and the staff, in the author’s experience, are genuinely helpful rather than performatively so.

On the islands, the calculus shifts. Some of the best restaurants on Corfu, Santorini, and Mykonos can be booked through concierge services, and this is one of the occasions where that service genuinely earns its existence. A good concierge will know which table at Etrusco has the better view, which night the chef is on form, and whether the sommelier is worth talking to. The answers, for the record, are the one by the garden, all of them, and yes.

For tavernas and neighbourhood restaurants, the Greek approach is refreshingly informal: arrive, sit, see what happens. This works better than it sounds. The worst outcome is a very good meal with no particular narrative. There are worse fates.

Where to Stay: The Villa Question

All of this eating, of course, requires a base. And the most quietly brilliant dining experience available in Greece is the one that requires no reservation at all: a private chef in a luxury villa in Greece, cooking with local market produce, on a terrace with a view that costs nothing extra. Several of the finest villas available through Excellence Luxury Villas offer exactly this – a private kitchen, a chef who knows what the islands produce, and an evening that belongs entirely to you. It is, to be clear, an extremely civilised way to eat.

For everything else you need to know about planning your time in Greece, the Greece Travel Guide covers the full picture – where to go, what to do, and how to do it without any of the usual missteps.