Best Restaurants in Paphos: Fine Dining, Local Gems & Where to Eat
There are places in the Mediterranean where the food is excellent and the setting is beautiful, and then there is Paphos – a town that somehow manages to serve you grilled octopus with a side of Roman mosaic and a view of a Crusader castle without making any of it feel contrived. Greece has the mythology, Italy has the ego, but Cyprus has something quieter and harder to explain: a cooking tradition that has been absorbing influences for three thousand years and still tastes entirely like itself. In Paphos specifically, that means halloumi that squeaks with purpose, meze that arrives in waves you didn’t ask for and absolutely did not want to stop, and a wine culture that most of the world still hasn’t discovered. Which suits the people who have discovered it just fine.
Whether you are after a long slow lunch in the old town, a harbour table with salt air and fresh sea bream, or a restaurant experience that would hold its own in any European capital, the best restaurants in Paphos deliver something for every register of appetite – and a few experiences that don’t fit neatly into any category at all. This guide covers all of it.
The Fine Dining Scene in Paphos
Paphos does not yet carry a Michelin star – which, depending on your relationship with the Michelin Guide, is either a problem or a pleasant relief. What the town does have is a small but serious collection of restaurants operating at a level that would be recognised and respected anywhere. The difference is that here, the cheffy ambition tends to be worn lightly, the produce is genuinely extraordinary, and the dining room rarely takes itself so seriously that you feel observed.
The benchmark for elevated dining in the wider Paphos region is Minthis Hills Restaurant, set within the Minthis resort at Tsada, a short drive into the wine-producing hills above the coast. This is the kind of place that makes you revise your expectations quietly and then say nothing to anyone because you want to come back undisturbed. The setting is extraordinary – ancient olive groves pressing up against the glass of floor-to-ceiling windows, the landscape rolling out in every direction in that particular golden way the Troodos foothills manage at dusk. But the food earns its own conversation. A seven-mushroom risotto that achieves something genuinely transcendent. Short rib orzo crowned with creamy burrata – comfort and finesse in the same forkful. Grilled octopus prepared with the confidence of a kitchen that knows its ingredient and does not feel the need to complicate it. Houmous that makes you reconsider every houmous you have eaten before. Multiple reviewers have called this the best meal of their Cyprus trip. It would be the best meal of many European trips.
For wine-forward fine dining closer to town, Passione Wine Bar & Food operates with a precision and personality that sets it apart from anything else in its category in Paphos. Rated as the best-reviewed restaurant on OpenTable in the area, Passione takes a tightly curated approach – a small, considered menu of Mediterranean fusion dishes designed explicitly to be ordered alongside wine, not after an afterthought of it. The team here actually speak wine, which is rarer than it should be. They also speak English, Greek and Russian, which makes the whole experience effortlessly welcoming for the international crowd that Paphos attracts. The starters alone justify a reservation.
Cypriot Tavernas and Local Gems
If the measure of a destination’s food culture is what ordinary people eat on an ordinary Tuesday, Paphos passes the test with considerable room to spare. The taverna tradition in Cyprus is not a tourist performance – it is simply how people eat, which is why it is so good.
7 St. George’s Tavern, found in the village of Yeroskipou just outside Paphos, represents this tradition at its most genuine and most compelling. Family-run, unhurried, and rooted entirely in local and organic ingredients, this is the kind of restaurant that travel writers struggle to describe without sounding faintly evangelical. The Cypriot meze here – which arrives, as all proper meze should, in a sequence that feels improvised but is clearly not – is made from produce that hasn’t travelled far and hasn’t needed to. The atmosphere is rustic and warm in the way that only authenticity can create. This is not a restaurant that is trying to feel traditional. It simply is.
In the old town itself, Laona Restaurant occupies a similarly beloved position among both locals and the expat community that has long called Paphos home. The menu is a masterclass in Cypriot home cooking: rabbit stew, meatballs, hearty braised dishes that reward patience and a good appetite. Laona is the kind of place where a leisurely lunch can become an afternoon without anyone particularly minding. The room is warm, the food is honest, and the ingredients are as fresh as the season allows. Order the rabbit if it’s on. It usually is.
Harbour Dining and Seafood
The Paphos harbour is one of those places that functions as a stage set for an entire afternoon – the medieval castle at one end, the bobbing fishing boats in the middle, and a row of restaurants along the waterfront that range from the purely decorative to the genuinely excellent. Choosing carefully matters here. The harbour’s attractions bring foot traffic, and foot traffic can attract indifference. The good places know they don’t need to try harder because the regulars keep returning.
Pelican Restaurant earns its reputation consistently, which is not always guaranteed for a harbour-front table with views this compelling. The seafood is locally sourced, the garlic mussels are the kind of thing you order first and then think about ordering again before you’ve finished, and the seafood platters are assembled with genuine care rather than assembled for appearance. The castle looms handsomely in the background. And yes – there are resident pelicans. They have the manner of locals who know they are part of the attraction and have quietly made their peace with it. The staff are attentive without being performative, and the facilities are well-maintained throughout. For a seafood lunch on the water, this is the address.
Beyond the harbour, the coastline around Paphos offers a number of beach club experiences where the line between lunch and late afternoon is deliberately blurred. These spaces – part restaurant, part sun terrace, part social event – tend to serve well-executed Mediterranean dishes: fresh fish, grilled vegetables, good bread, cold wine. They are best approached without a schedule and with sunglasses capable of handling the afternoon glare off the water.
What to Order: Dishes You Should Not Leave Without Trying
Cyprus has a cuisine that is emphatically its own – related to Greek cooking, influenced by Middle Eastern and Levantine traditions, and shaped by three thousand years of occupation, trade, and stubbornness. In Paphos, this means certain dishes are essentially compulsory.
Meze is the obvious starting point, but it deserves more than an obvious mention. A full Cypriot meze is not a tapas selection or a grazing plate situation – it is a structured, generous, occasionally overwhelming sequence of small dishes that proceeds at its own pace and ends more or less when the kitchen decides you have eaten enough. Order it with confidence and surrender control immediately. Halloumi, grilled until the outside caramelises and the inside holds its shape, is a different experience here than anywhere else – largely because it is not imported, stretched, or compromised. Kleftiko – slow-cooked lamb, sealed in a clay parcel – appears on most taverna menus and rewards patience with something deeply tender and fragrant. Loukoumades, small honey-soaked doughnuts, finish a meal with just the right amount of sweetness and structural collapse.
On the seafood side: grilled sea bream or sea bass, octopus in any form, and the local calamari are consistently excellent. Order according to what arrived at the harbour that morning if anyone will tell you – the better restaurants usually will.
Wine, Commandaria and Local Drinks
Cyprus produces wine and has been producing it for longer than most wine-producing nations have existed as countries. Commandaria – a sweet amber dessert wine with origins going back to the Crusades – is the local drink that every visitor should try at least once and most visitors then quietly attempt to bring home in their hand luggage. It tastes of dried fruit, history, and good judgement.
The wine region of the Troodos foothills – from which Minthis Hills surveys its landscape – produces varieties including Xynisteri (a dry white with a clean mineral character, suited to seafood and warm evenings) and Maratheftiko (a full-bodied red with the kind of character that people who like wine get slightly too excited about). These grapes are grown almost nowhere else. The Passione Wine Bar team will introduce you to them properly if you let them, and you should let them.
For something non-alcoholic, freshly pressed pomegranate juice is available at most markets and several cafés in Paphos, and the Cypriot coffee tradition – thick, served in small cups, often accompanied by a piece of loukoum – is worth adopting for the duration of your stay. It is not for speed. Nothing about eating and drinking in Paphos is.
Food Markets and Provenance
The Paphos Municipal Market in the town centre is the kind of place that rewards an unhurried morning. Stalls selling local cheeses, cured meats, fresh herbs, honey, carob products, and seasonal fruit offer both excellent provisions for a villa kitchen and a useful context for everything you subsequently order in a restaurant. The halloumi here – bought directly from small producers rather than supermarket chillers – is worth the visit alone. The carob syrup, which Cyprus was built on before citrus took over, is an underrated souvenir that functions beautifully over yoghurt, ice cream, or directly off a spoon.
Markets aside, the best access to Cypriot produce for villa guests is often through local suppliers who deliver to private properties – fresh fish from the harbour, seasonal vegetables from inland farms, wine from the Troodos estates. This is not a complication. It is one of the genuine pleasures of having a kitchen worth using.
Reservation Tips and Practical Advice
Paphos in high season – roughly June through September – sees significant visitor numbers, and the better restaurants fill up accordingly. Passione Wine Bar, given its size and reputation, is the kind of place where booking a day or two in advance is straightforwardly sensible rather than fussy. Minthis Hills, being resort-adjacent, can be contacted directly and rewards advance planning with better table placement. For harbour restaurants including Pelican, a same-day reservation usually suffices outside of peak weekends, but there is little to lose by calling ahead.
Lunch in Cyprus tends to run from around 1pm to 3.30pm and is often the main meal of the day for locals – which means it can be quieter at lunch than dinner, and frequently better value. Dinner service typically begins around 7.30pm. Arriving at 6pm because you’re hungry will work, but you will be surrounded exclusively by other tourists and the atmosphere will take a while to arrive.
A word on dress: Paphos is relaxed by nature. Fine dining establishments appreciate smart-casual; tavernas are entirely unbothered. The general principle is that Cyprus will not judge you, and the food will not taste different in a linen shirt. Though it might feel like it does.
Making the Most of Paphos as a Food Destination
The best restaurants in Paphos: fine dining, local gems and where to eat is not just a checklist – it is a mood. Paphos rewards the kind of traveller who is happy to let a meal take as long as it needs, to follow a waiter’s recommendation rather than the first item on the menu, and to accept that a second glass of Xynisteri is entirely reasonable at half past two in the afternoon. The town has been feeding visitors since antiquity. It has had time to work out what it is doing.
For those staying in a luxury villa in Paphos, the experience extends even further. Many villas offer private chef options that bring the best of the local market directly to your table – halloumi from that morning’s producer, fish from the harbour, a proper Cypriot meze constructed in your own kitchen and served at your own pace with no one to hurry you along. It is, frankly, one of the more civilised ways to spend an evening in Cyprus. For everything else Paphos has to offer beyond the table, the full Paphos Travel Guide is the place to continue.
