Best Restaurants in Elia: Fine Dining, Local Gems & Where to Eat

Here is the mild confession: Elia is, by the standards of the Mykonos coastline, supposed to be a beach. That is its job. That is why people come. And yet somewhere along the way, between the crystalline water and the long afternoon light that turns everything golden by five, Elia quietly became one of the more interesting places to eat on the island. Not the most famous – that honour goes, loudly and repeatedly, to the windmill-adjacent spots of Mykonos Town – but interesting in the way that actually matters, which is to say: the food is good, the settings are beautiful without trying too hard, and you are unlikely to spend half your meal watching someone else take photographs of their meal. Elia rewards the traveller who looks a little further than the obvious. Which, if you are reading a guide like this, you probably already knew.

The Dining Scene in Elia: What to Expect

Elia sits at the southeastern end of Mykonos, about as far as you can get from the tourist machinery of the port without actually leaving the island. The beach is the longest on Mykonos, the crowd is marginally more discerning, and the restaurants that have established themselves here tend to reflect that. You will not find the frantic table-turning of a Mykonos Town terrace at the height of August. What you will find is a more considered approach to eating – fresh fish that genuinely arrived that morning, vegetables from the interior of the island, and olive oil that takes its job seriously.

The dining scene ranges from proper sit-down restaurants with accomplished wine lists to the kind of casual taverna where the plastic chairs are not ironic. Both have their place. Both will require, in high season, more planning than you might expect for somewhere that technically bills itself as a beach destination. The simple rule: if you want to eat somewhere with a sea view and fewer than six other people looking at their phones, book ahead. This cannot be stressed enough.

Fine Dining in Elia and the Wider Mykonos Area

Elia itself operates at an elevated casual level rather than white-tablecloth formality – the setting, frankly, does not suit stiff napkins and amuse-bouches – but the fine dining conversation in this part of Mykonos is worth having. The island has attracted serious culinary talent over the past decade, and while the Michelin Guide has traditionally focused its Greek attention on Athens and Thessaloniki, the standard of cooking at the better establishments in the Elia area would not embarrass a city restaurant anywhere in Europe.

What passes for fine dining here tends to be defined less by ceremony and more by ingredient quality and execution. You are looking for restaurants where the kitchen is demonstrably cooking rather than assembling, where the fish is presented with confidence rather than buried under unnecessary sauce, and where the wine list shows signs of someone having thought about it beyond the obvious Santorini Assyrtiko. Several beach-adjacent restaurants in and around Elia have evolved in exactly this direction – long menus built around the day’s catch, supplemented by excellent Greek land produce: lamb from Naxos, cheese from Crete, figs and honey that taste like the specific hillside they came from. The luxury, here, is in the provenance rather than the pageantry.

Tavernas and Local Gems: Where Elia Actually Eats

The taverna is the backbone of Greek eating and, happily, still alive in Elia in forms that have not been entirely smoothed out for tourist consumption. These are the places where you will find an older local eating alone at noon with a carafe of house white and absolutely no interest in the view – because he has seen the view – and where the menu is, in the best possible sense, limited by what arrived fresh that morning.

Look for the places where grilled octopus is hung to dry outside before service. This is not aesthetic decoration; it is a sign that the kitchen is doing things properly. Traditional dishes to seek out include kakavia – the Greek fisherman’s stew, which is essentially bouillabaisse before the French got involved – along with garides saganaki (prawns baked with feta and tomato), fresh sea bream simply grilled with lemon and mountain herbs, and kolokythokeftedes, the courgette fritters that sound unpromising on paper and are, in practice, one of the more addictive things a Greek kitchen produces.

The local taverna also functions as the place where you discover that the house salad with proper barrel feta, good tomatoes, and a pour of decent olive oil is not a humble thing at all. It is, in the right hands, a dish that makes you question every salad you have eaten elsewhere. The Greeks have known this for some time.

Beach Clubs and Casual Dining Along the Shoreline

Elia’s beach clubs are a different proposition from the taverna: louder, more design-conscious, significantly more invested in their Instagram presence, and – it has to be said – often surprisingly good at feeding people who did not come primarily to eat. The format here is sun lounger plus cocktail plus seafood lunch, and the better operators have understood that the food needs to hold its own rather than serve merely as an excuse to occupy a prime piece of waterfront real estate.

The menu at most beach clubs in Elia leans Mediterranean-Greek: fresh fish, light pasta dishes, mezze plates designed for sharing between people who may have already had two drinks before noon. Quality varies. The useful guide is to look at what other tables are eating rather than what the laminated menu promises – if the grilled fish looks properly cooked and the plates are coming out with a degree of care, you are in the right place. If the bread arrived cold and no one seemed to notice, perhaps just order drinks and move on.

The better beach clubs also take their cocktail programmes seriously, which matters in a place where the afternoon stretches luxuriously in front of you and the afternoon sun will not be rushed. A well-made Aperol spritz by the Aegean is, objectively, one of the more pleasant ways to spend an hour. Or two. No judgement here.

Hidden Gems: The Restaurants Worth Seeking Out

Every destination of this kind has its hidden gems – the places that have not yet been discovered by the travel pages but are known to the people who have been coming here for years. In Elia, these tend to be the smaller family-run spots slightly back from the main beach drag, where the proprietor is also the cook and takes the gentle suggestion of a recipe change as a personal affront. This is, in context, a recommendation.

The pattern to follow: ask at your villa, ask at the quieter end of the beach, ask the person who is eating lunch rather than photographing it. The best versions of these places are characterised by an absence of ambiance investment – no mood lighting, no curated playlist – and an absolute seriousness about the food. You might eat at a table that wobbles. The grilled fish will not wobble. It will be some of the best you have had.

This category also includes the small kafeneion – the traditional Greek coffee house – where breakfast or a mid-morning pause is best marked with a Greek coffee (served thick, sweet if you ask, in a small cup with a glass of water), a piece of bougatsa (warm custard pastry with a dusting of icing sugar), and absolutely no hurry. The kafeneion is not a meal destination in the fine dining sense. It is, however, a destination in every sense that matters.

Food Markets and Local Produce: Eating Like a Resident

Mykonos is not, to be honest, the most agriculturally intensive of the Greek islands – the landscape is dramatic but not especially forgiving – and yet the local food culture punches well above its apparent weight. Local produce to look for includes kopanisti, the sharp, peppery soft cheese that is a Mykonian speciality and entirely unlike anything you will find in a supermarket elsewhere in Greece. It is salty, pungent, and goes with everything from fresh bread to grilled vegetables to a cold beer at the end of the afternoon. It is also, for various EU regulatory reasons, protected in a way that means the real thing can only come from the Cyclades.

The markets and local shops in the broader Mykonos area are worth exploring if you are staying in a villa and inclined to put together your own spread. Locally cured meats, thyme honey from the island’s scrubby hillsides, fresh bread from family bakeries, sun-dried tomatoes, and a bottle of decent Assyrtiko from Santorini or a Cretan red will see you through the kind of terrace lunch that no restaurant can quite replicate – because it is yours, at your own pace, with no one hovering over the table.

Wine, Drinks, and What to Order

The Greek wine scene has undergone a quiet revolution over the past two decades, and travellers who arrive with outdated expectations of retsina and not much else are in for a pleasant recalibration. Assyrtiko from Santorini remains the benchmark white – crisp, mineral, with an acidity that cuts through fish and seafood with elegant efficiency – but do not overlook Moschofilero from the Peloponnese (fragrant, lower alcohol, excellent at lunch) or the increasingly impressive wines coming from northern Greece, particularly the Xinomavro reds from Naoussa, which offer something close to Barolo complexity at a price that remains, for now, very reasonable.

At the table in Elia, the house white carafe remains a perfectly honourable choice, particularly in the more casual tavernas. The wine will be local, cold, and unpretentious – and will taste exactly right with a plate of grilled fish and a view of the sea. For something more considered, ask the restaurant for their Greek-focused selection; any good establishment in this area should be able to walk you through options from across the country.

Beyond wine: Mythos or Alfa beer work as honest accompaniments to mezze; tsipouro (the Greek grappa equivalent) is the correct way to end a long lunch; and the ubiquitous frappe – Greek iced instant coffee, which sounds terrible and tastes strangely essential – is the afternoon fuel of choice for everyone who lives here.

Reservation Tips: How to Actually Get a Table

July and August in Elia operate on a different logic to the rest of the year. The beach fills early; the restaurants fill fast. The general principle is that anywhere worth eating at in high season requires a reservation, ideally made the day before at minimum and earlier where possible for the more sought-after spots. This is not the kind of destination where you can wander out at eight in the evening and expect the best table on the terrace to be waiting for you. It won’t be. Someone from a villa on the other side of the beach reserved it three days ago.

A few practical notes: many of the better restaurants in Elia and the surrounding area take reservations via phone or directly through their own websites rather than third-party platforms – so a direct call, even a brief one, is often the most reliable approach. If you are staying in a luxury villa, your villa management team will frequently be able to secure reservations that might otherwise appear impossible. This is one of those cases where the advantage of proper villa support is completely tangible rather than theoretical.

For beach clubs specifically, book your sun loungers and table simultaneously – the two are often linked, and the kitchen and the beach operation work as one unit. Arriving and hoping for the best is an entirely viable approach in shoulder season (May, early June, late September). In August it is, charitably, an act of optimism.

Staying in Elia: The Villa Advantage

All of this eating, delightful as it is, exists alongside a genuinely compelling alternative: staying in a luxury villa in Elia and bringing the best of the local food scene to your own table. Several villas in the area offer private chef options – arrangements through which a properly trained cook arrives at your property, sources ingredients from local markets and suppliers, and produces meals that combine the island’s exceptional raw materials with a standard of cooking that the finest restaurants would not be embarrassed by. The setting is, of course, incomparable: your own terrace, your own pace, the sea in front of you and no one asking if you have finished.

This is not a retreat from the local dining scene so much as a different engagement with it. You can – and should – still go out to the taverna, still do the beach club lunch, still find the kafeneion that makes the right coffee. But the option to spend three evenings in a row eating exceptionally well on your own terms, with a glass of cold Assyrtiko and a sunset that takes its time about things, is one of the more persuasive arguments for the villa model. For more on planning your time in this part of Mykonos, the full Elia Travel Guide covers everything from beaches to boat trips to the best times to visit.