Santorini Restaurants

Top 10 Restaurants in Santorini

The best Santorini restaurants are inland, not on the caldera rim: Pyrgos, Exo Gonia, Megalochori and Emporio charge about a third of rim prices and cook better. Santorini Tours drives guests to them every week. Fish at Ammoudi or Vlychada, one rim dinner, and everything else in a village.

The weather may not have decided yet if it wants to show us its good face or not, but we are convinced that the islands are waiting for us.

Greece has beauties for the whole year. Santorini, who is the heart of its visitors, will fill the picturesque alleys and become one with the locals.

Whether you are organizing an Easter trip or thinking about your summer vacation now, this article is of interest to you. Before you book tickets and prepare luggage, check out the best 10 restaurants on the island to choose the best culinary delights of Santorini.

You can always book a Santorini Private Tour to visit Santorini’s sightseeings and wineries along with the restaurants you will choose to have dinner.

Santorini is all time classic on the list of the ten things that you have to do before you die. We, here in Greece are a little bit more fortunate than the rest, as we have it relatively closer to us. When you manage to leave Oia and the spectacular sunset, you descend the volcano and decide to eat, then the fava and the tomato balls are must.

Check the following lists for all day food

Most of us take our breakfast in our hotels so my list does not involve places for breakfast. There is a large number of villages in Santorini which you can visit, see the sightseeings and eat.

Top 10 Restaurants in Santorini for lunch

• Seaside Santorini
• Pitogyros (ΠιτόΓύρος)
• Falafeland
• Terra Nerra
• No Name Grill House
• Aroma Aulis Food & Wine (Άρωμα Αυλής)
• Anemoloos (Ανεμόλοος)
• Seaside Santorini
• Theoni’s Kitchen
• Imba

Top 10 Restaurants in Santorini for dinner

• Terpsi in Oia
• Le Ciel Restaurant
• Ombra Restaurant
• Casa di Te Santorini
• FlyAway Creative Restaurant & Bar powered by WEST EAST SUITES
• Jaipur Palace Santorini
• Leukes (Λεύκες)
• Aroma Aulis Food & Wine (Άρωμα Αυλής)
• Melitini (Μελιτίνι)
• Throubi Restaurant

Of course there are many more excellent restaurants and as we all know, food is a matter of taste, so we cannot write them all down, but you can also ask the locals and arrange Private Transfers to wherever you desire to have your dinner or lunch.

You can also check our previous article to learn about traditional dishes of the island and find out the best food in Santorini and which dish to try!

You can take a tour of Santorini!

Take a Santorini private tour

Santorini private tours offer tasting tours of production sites and vineyards; visits to museums and traditional Oia Greece canaves are some of the options that will give you an intoxicating experience.

• Santorini Full Day Private Tour
• Santorini Sightseeing Private Tour
• Santorini Private Custom Tour
• Popular Destination Santorini Private Tour
• Santorini Private Tour and Food Experience
• Santorini Exclusive Shore Private Tour
• Santorini Impressive Caldera Private Tour
• Santorini South Part Private Tour
• Santorini North Part Private Tour
• Santorini Historical Private Tour
• Santorini Sunset Private Tour

Read more about Santorini Tours

Read more articles in our Blog

Santorini Restaurants: The Short Answer

Eat inland. That is the whole Santorini restaurants guide in two words, and it is the single piece of advice that changes most people’s week here.

Santorini restaurants divide almost perfectly along one line: those with a caldera view and those without. The view costs roughly two to three times as much for food that is, on average, worse. The village tavernas at Pyrgos, Megalochori, Exo Gonia, Emporio and Vothonas are fifteen minutes from Fira, cook for people who live here, and charge ordinary Greek prices.

Do the rim once, for the occasion. Do everything else inland, at the fish tavernas in Ammoudi and Vlychada, or on the beach fronts at Perissa and Kamari. That single decision will save a family several hundred euro across a week and improve what they eat.

Below: what to eat, where to eat it by area, what it costs, when to book, and the mistakes that make people say the food here is overpriced.

What Do Santorini Restaurants Do Best?

The volcanic soil and the near-total absence of rain produce ingredients that grow nowhere else in Greece, and the good Santorini restaurants are built on them.

Fava

Yellow split pea puree, served warm with olive oil, capers and raw onion. Santorini fava has PDO protection, which means it can only be called that if it is grown here. It is on every menu on the island and it is the single dish to order first, because how a kitchen makes fava tells you what kind of place you are in.

Tomatokeftedes

Fritters made from the tiny Santorini cherry tomato. The variety grows with no irrigation at all, which concentrates the sugars and gives it a flavour nothing in a supermarket approaches. Served with a yoghurt dip.

White aubergine

Sweeter, less bitter and less watery than the purple kind, grown here and almost nowhere else. Usually grilled, sometimes as a spread.

Chloro cheese

Fresh, soft, slightly sour goat cheese made on the island in small quantities and rarely exported off it. Often served with tomatokeftedes or in a salad instead of feta.

Capers and caper leaves

Wild, salted and in half the salads here. The leaves are the local touch that visitors do not expect.

Katsouni

A local cucumber that is left to ripen and eaten more like a melon. Rarer, and a sign of a kitchen that shops locally.

Fresh fish

Priced by the kilo and chosen at the counter. Ammoudi below Oia and the marina at Vlychada are the two places to do this properly.

Slow-cooked meat

Goat, lamb and rooster in tomato, done properly in the inland villages and rarely on the rim.

Assyrtiko and Vinsanto

The dry saline white and the sweet amber dessert wine, both from the same grape. Any decent restaurant here will pour Assyrtiko by the glass. Wine tour.

What to be sceptical about

Anything described as a “Santorini special” on a laminated menu with photographs. The best Santorini restaurants have short menus that change, not long ones that do not.

Where Are the Best Santorini Restaurants by Area?

The island is small enough that you can eat anywhere on it, and different enough between areas that where you eat matters more than what you order.

Pyrgos

The best all-round area for Santorini restaurants. The highest village on the island, fifteen minutes from Fira, with a Venetian castle at the top and tavernas up the lanes. Genuinely the best combination on the island of food, price and view – you look down over the whole of Santorini rather than out at the caldera, and you pay village prices. Several long-established tables here are the ones locals recommend to each other. Pyrgos.

Exo Gonia

Five minutes from Pyrgos, a small village most visitors drive past, and home to some of the most consistently praised Santorini restaurants on the island. Traditional Cycladic cooking done seriously, with a terrace looking east. Book in season; it is not a secret any more. Exo Gonia.

Megalochori

Bell towers, cave houses, walled mansions and two wineries within walking distance. A handful of tables in the square and along the lanes, all of them reasonable, none of them touristy. The best place on the island for a long lunch. Megalochori.

Emporio

The cheapest sit-down Santorini restaurants on the island. Tavernas inside and around the medieval kastelli, cooking for residents. Cheapest proper meals on the island. Emporio.

Ammoudi

The most photographed of all Santorini restaurants settings. The old harbour of Oia, at the bottom of about 300 steps or a switchback road. Six or seven fish tavernas with tables on the water, fish chosen from the counter and priced by the kilo. This is the one non-inland exception worth paying for. Go for a late lunch rather than at sunset, when every table is booked and the steps are full. Oia.

Vlychada

The most under-rated of the fish Santorini restaurants. A quiet marina on the south coast under wind-carved grey cliffs, with a couple of fish restaurants that locals rate above Ammoudi and tourists have not entirely found. Flat, easy to park at, and calm in the evening. Vlychada.

Fira

Fira has the widest choice of Santorini restaurants and the widest range in quality. Everything from a few euro of gyros to a full caldera-view tasting menu, within four hundred metres. The rule here is simple: the further back from the rim you walk, the better the value. Fira also has the island’s only real late-night eating. Fira.

Firostefani and Imerovigli

Caldera-view Santorini restaurants without the Oia premium, and a slightly calmer clientele. If you want the view dinner, this is where we would have it rather than in Oia. Imerovigli.

Oia

The most expensive of the Santorini restaurants by a distance, and the most booked. Some of it is genuinely excellent and all of it is priced for the sunset. Book weeks ahead in July and August for anything with a view.

Kamari

A long promenade of tavernas and beach fronts under the cliff of Ancient Thira, plus an open-air cinema. Family-friendly, mid-priced, and the quality is more consistent than Perissa. Kamari.

Perissa and Perivolos

The cheapest beach-front Santorini restaurants. Seven kilometres of beach front with everything from souvlaki to seafood, at the lowest prices of any organised area. Perivolos is the quieter, slightly better half. Perissa · Perivolos.

Karterados, Messaria and Vothonas

The most honest Santorini restaurants on the island. Working villages within ten minutes of Fira with no view, no marketing and the most honest prices on the island. If you are staying nearby, eat here. Karterados · Vothonas.

The wineries

Several estates run their own Santorini restaurants or serve plates alongside a tasting, with views over the caldera or across the vines. Lunch at a winery is one of the better meals available here and one of the least booked.

What Should You Order in Each Course?

A practical ordering guide, because Santorini restaurants use Greek menu structure are organised differently from most European ones and the mistake is usually structural rather than culinary.

The salad

Order one for the table, not one each. A horiatiki here comes with capers and often chloro instead of feta, and it is a substantial dish rather than a side.

The dips

Fava first, always. Then tzatziki, melitzanosalata or a caper spread. Bread arrives with them and is usually charged as a small cover.

The hot mezedes

Tomatokeftedes, grilled white aubergine, saganaki, gigantes, dolmades, fried courgette. Three or four of these between two people is a meal on its own and it is how the island actually eats.

The greens

Horta – boiled wild greens with lemon and oil – is on every menu and almost never ordered by visitors. It is the healthiest thing in the room and it costs very little.

The main

One between two if you have ordered mezedes properly. Fish by the kilo, slow-cooked goat or lamb, or grilled meat. The best Santorini restaurants inland do the slow-cooked dishes best.

The wine

House white by the half litre with mezedes; a bottle of Assyrtiko if you are eating fish and want to taste the island properly.

Dessert

Usually brought free at the end – a plate of fruit, a small cake, a shot of something. Ordering dessert as well is optional and often unnecessary.

Coffee

Afterwards, and elsewhere. Greeks eat and then go somewhere else for coffee.

How Does the Season Change Where You Eat?

April and May

Everything reopening, Lenten dishes at their best around Easter, and no need to book anywhere. The kitchens are fresh and the staff are not yet exhausted, which is a genuine factor in how well you eat.

June

Full season, every one of the Santorini restaurants open, and booking becomes worthwhile for the rim. The best month overall for eating here.

July and August

Every table with a view is booked, service is under pressure everywhere, and prices are at their peak. The inland villages absorb this far better than the rim does, which is another reason to eat there.

September

The harvest is in, the wineries are busy, the Santorini restaurants relax, the crowds thin after the first week, and the kitchens relax. Many people’s favourite month for food.

October

Good value, quieter, and businesses begin closing from the middle of the month.

November to March

Fira and the inland villages keep enough Santorini restaurants open all year. Oia and the beach fronts largely close. Winter menus are cooked for residents, which means slower dishes, lower prices and better food.

Where Do the Ingredients Come From?

Worth asking, because a good number of Santorini restaurants import almost everything.

Tomatoes and fava from the island’s own fields, in season, from small growers. Out of season some of it is imported and a good kitchen will say so.

Chloro from a handful of small producers. If a menu lists it, that is a positive signal.

Capers gathered wild, salted, and genuinely local.

Fish from small boats, landed at Vlychada and the other small harbours. Not everything on a fish menu is local and the honest places will tell you which is which.

Meat mostly from other islands and the mainland; there is very little grazing here.

Wine from the island’s own estates, and the good Santorini restaurants pour it by the glass rather than only by the bottle.

Everything else arrives by ferry, which is part of why prices are higher here than on the mainland even away from the caldera.

What Do Santorini Restaurants Cost?

Bands rather than prices, because they move with the season and the exchange rate. All per person, food only.

Street food

Gyros or souvlaki wrapped in pitta, single figures, and available in Fira, Kamari, Perissa and most villages. Genuinely good, and the reason nobody needs to go hungry expensively on this island.

Bakery

Breakfast for a few euro: bougatsa, tiropita, koulouri, fresh bread. Every village has one and they open early. Skipping the hotel buffet in favour of a bakery is the easiest saving available here.

Village taverna

A full meal with a salad, two or three shared plates, a main and a half litre of wine at an ordinary Greek price. This is where the good Santorini restaurants live.

Beach front

Slightly above village prices, with a wider menu and more variation in quality.

Fish taverna at Ammoudi or Vlychada

Fish is priced by the kilo and you choose it at the counter. Ask the price per kilo and the weight of the piece before you agree – this is normal and nobody is offended. A shared whole fish with sides is a proper occasion meal.

Caldera-view restaurant

Two to three times a village taverna for comparable food. These are the Santorini restaurants people mean when they call the island expensive. Firostefani and Imerovigli are cheaper than Oia for the same view.

Fine dining

The island has several genuinely serious Santorini restaurants, mostly on the rim and at one or two of the wineries, with tasting menus at European city prices.

Wine

House wine by the half litre is cheap. Bottled Assyrtiko in a restaurant is roughly double the estate door price, which is normal everywhere. Vinsanto by the glass is worth it once.

What a week costs

A couple eating one bakery breakfast, one cheap lunch and one taverna dinner a day will spend a fraction of what a couple eating two rim meals a day spends. Across seven days the difference is comfortably the price of a private full-day tour.

When Should You Eat, and Do You Need to Book?

Greek meal times

Santorini restaurants run on Greek hours. Lunch runs from about half past one to four. Dinner starts at nine and a kitchen is busiest between half past nine and eleven. A restaurant that is full at seven is cooking for tourists; a restaurant that is empty at seven and full at ten is cooking for Greeks.

Booking

Essential for anything with a caldera view in July and August – several days ahead, and weeks ahead in Oia for sunset. Unnecessary for village tavernas outside the peak, though a phone call the same morning is polite and gets you the better table.

Sunset dinners

Every table with a view of the sun going down is booked in high season. If you have not booked, eat at half past nine after the sunset crowd has turned over, which is also when the food gets better because the kitchen has settled.

Cruise passengers

You will be eating lunch, not dinner. Do it inland: Megalochori, Pyrgos or Exo Gonia, all fifteen minutes from Fira and a third of the rim price. Shore excursion.

Sunday and holidays

Village Santorini restaurants fill with families at lunch on Sundays. It is the best time to be in one and the hardest time to get a table without calling.

Out of season

Many Santorini restaurants close from November to March. Fira and the inland villages keep enough open all year; Oia and the beach fronts largely do not. Santorini in winter.

How Do You Tell a Good Taverna From a Bad One?

Ten signals for sorting Santorini restaurants, all of which work anywhere in Greece and all of which work particularly well here, where the ratio of tourist-facing to resident-facing Santorini restaurants is unusually high.

A short menu. Twelve dishes cooked today beats sixty dishes cooked at some point.

No photographs of the food. A laminated picture menu is aimed at people who will eat there once.

Nobody outside inviting you in. Restaurants that need a tout on the pavement need one for a reason.

Greek voices at the tables. Especially at half past nine.

Handwritten daily specials. Usually on a board, often only in Greek. Ask what they are.

Fish priced by the kilo, displayed on ice. Not “fresh fish” as a menu line with a fixed price.

Fava that tastes of something. The house benchmark dish.

House wine in a jug. A place confident enough to pour its own.

Off the main street. One lane back from the rim in Fira, or up the hill in Pyrgos.

Slightly awkward service. Family-run places are run by families, not by a hospitality script.

Conversely, the warning signs that separate weak Santorini restaurants from good ones: a view that dominates the marketing, a menu in six languages with photographs, a set “Greek night” with dancing, and prices that are hidden until you sit down.

What Mistakes Do People Make With Santorini Restaurants?

Eating every meal on the caldera rim. The single most expensive habit on this island, and the food is not better.

Never leaving Fira and Oia. Two villages out of thirty-two, and neither of them is where the island eats.

Turning up at seven and finding it empty. That is not a bad restaurant; that is a Greek restaurant before dinner time.

Not asking the price of fish per kilo. Entirely normal to ask, and the source of most complaints about being overcharged.

Assuming a service charge is a tip. Tipping is not obligatory here. Rounding up is normal and ten percent is generous.

Ordering a main each. Greek eating is shared plates. Two or three mezedes and one main between two is more food than most people expect.

Skipping the village tavernas because they look plain. The plainest rooms have the best kitchens, which is the most reliable rule about Santorini restaurants there is.

Booking sunset dinner at eight. You will be eating in a crush with a kitchen at full stretch. Nine thirty is better food and a calmer room.

Buying wine in a gift shop. The estates are fifteen minutes away and cheaper at the door.

Drinking the tap water. The island runs largely on desalination. Order bottled.

What If You Have Dietary Requirements?

Vegetarian

Santorini restaurants serve vegetarians extremely well, almost by accident. Greek Lenten cooking – nistisima – is essentially vegan, and every taverna has fava, gigantes, dolmades, briam, horta, tomatokeftedes and grilled vegetables as standard.

Vegan

Vegan eating in Santorini restaurants is easier than in most of Europe if you are willing to eat mezedes rather than mains. Check that fava has not been finished with anything, and that horta is dressed with oil rather than butter.

Gluten free

Grilled fish and meat, salads, fava and vegetables are naturally fine. Bread and pitta are not, and cross-contamination in a small kitchen is a real consideration.

Dairy free

Straightforward, but check for yoghurt in dips and feta appearing uninvited in salads.

Allergies

Say it clearly at the start. Greek kitchens are generally helpful and generally informal, so specific and early is better than polite and vague.

Children

Children are very welcome in Santorini restaurants and often actively fussed over. Most Santorini restaurants will do a plain grilled chicken or a plate of chips without being asked twice, and nobody minds a child moving around a taverna.

Are the Caldera-View Restaurants Worth It?

Once, yes. As a habit, no. It is worth setting out both sides properly rather than simply telling people to avoid them.

The case for

The caldera at sunset from a table on the rim is one of the great settings in European dining, and no photograph prepares you for it. Several of the kitchens are genuinely serious, with proper wine lists and cooking that would hold up in any European city. If you are here for a honeymoon, an anniversary or once in your life, you should do it, and you should book it properly rather than take whatever is left.

The case against

Two to three times the price for food that is often no better than a village taverna’s. Tables packed close because rim frontage is the most expensive real estate on the island. Service under pressure from six to nine because everybody wants the same ninety minutes. And a room where nobody is looking at the food.

Where to do it

Firostefani or Imerovigli rather than Oia. The same caldera, the same sunset, a calmer room and a noticeably smaller bill. Oia charges a premium for being Oia.

How to do it well

Book at half past nine rather than eight. The sunset crowd has turned over, the kitchen has settled, the room is quieter and the food is better. You still get the afterglow, which is arguably the better light anyway.

How to get the view for nothing

Have one drink on the rim at sunset and dinner in a village afterwards. The view from the public path is identical, and this is what a good number of residents do.

The honest summary

Caldera-view Santorini restaurants sell a setting and price it accordingly, which is entirely fair. The mistake is buying it seven nights running without noticing.

What Do People Complain About Most?

Reading complaints about Santorini restaurants, the same six come up, and five of them are avoidable.

“Overpriced.” Almost always about the caldera rim. Inland prices are ordinary.

“Charged too much for fish.” Fish is by the kilo. Ask the price per kilo and the weight of the piece before agreeing. Nobody is offended and the problem disappears.

“The restaurant was empty.” At seven o’clock, in Greece. It was full at ten.

“Rushed service.” Usually a rim restaurant during the sunset turnover. Book later.

“Touristy food.” Usually a picture menu on a main street. One lane back is a different island.

“Bread we didn’t order.” A small cover charge, standard across Greece, and it is on the menu.

The one genuine complaint that is not the visitor’s fault: in peak August, a good number of kitchens are running at a volume they were not built for, and quality slips everywhere. That is a reason to come in June or September rather than a reason to eat somewhere else.

What Makes the Food Here Different?

Worth understanding, because it explains why the good Santorini restaurants taste unlike anywhere else in Greece and why the bad ones taste like everywhere else.

No rain, no irrigation

Santorini gets very little rainfall and the island runs on desalination. Traditional agriculture here has almost no irrigation at all. Plants survive on night moisture drawn out of the sea air by the porous volcanic soil, and the result is small fruit with concentrated flavour. The cherry tomato is the clearest example: tiny, intensely sweet, and nothing like a commercial tomato.

Volcanic soil

The ash and pumice laid down by the eruption of around 1600 BC drain instantly and hold minerals. It is why the wine is saline, why the fava is dense, and why the aubergines are sweet.

Wind

The meltemi shapes the agriculture as much as the soil does. Vines are woven into low baskets to shelter the fruit; crops are grown low and close. Everything here grows defensively.

Scarcity

Historically this was a poor island with limited water, so the cooking is built on pulses, preserved things, capers, wild greens and small quantities of meat. That is still the backbone of the menu at a village taverna, and it is why Lenten cooking here is so good.

The sea

The caldera drops four hundred metres and the fishing is small-boat rather than industrial. Fish is priced by the kilo because it arrives by the kilo.

What that means for you

Order the things that come out of this specific ground: fava, tomatokeftedes, white aubergine, chloro, capers, Assyrtiko. Santorini restaurants that put those at the centre of the menu are the ones worth eating in; those that bury them under an international list are trading on the view.

How Do You Eat Well on a Budget?

Santorini restaurants have a reputation for being expensive and it is entirely possible to eat here for ordinary Greek money.

Bakery breakfast. Cheaper than any of the Santorini restaurants and better than most hotel buffets. every day. Across a week that alone pays for a tour.

Gyros lunch. Single figures, genuinely good, and available in Fira, Karterados, Kamari and Perissa.

Village dinner. The cheapest good Santorini restaurants: Pyrgos, Megalochori, Emporio, Exo Gonia, Vothonas. A third of rim prices.

Share. Greek eating is mezedes in the middle of the table. Two people ordering a main each is both more expensive and less interesting.

House wine. By the half litre, from the jug, and usually perfectly good.

Supermarket lunch on a beach day. Bread, tomatoes, chloro, olives, fruit. Nobody minds.

Eat the big meal at lunch. Many Santorini restaurants run cheaper lunch menus, and the kitchen is calmer.

Skip the caldera view except once. The view is free from the street. Pay for it deliberately, one evening, rather than by accident every evening.

Buy wine at the estate. Not in a Fira gift shop.

Go in the shoulder season. April, May, September and October are cheaper across the board and the same kitchens are open.

What Do the Locals Eat?

Different from the visitor menu in a few consistent ways, and worth copying.

Later. Nine or half past nine for dinner, one thirty to three for lunch.

Shared. A table of mezedes rather than a plate each.

Inland. Almost nobody who lives here uses the caldera Santorini restaurants except for an occasion. eats on the caldera rim except for an occasion.

Fish at the harbours. Vlychada and the small ports rather than the famous ones.

Sunday lunch as the main event. Families, long tables, and village tavernas full from two o’clock.

Wine by the jug. Bottled Assyrtiko is what you take home, not what you drink with a Tuesday dinner.

Nistisima in Lent. The Lenten dishes are on every menu in spring and they are some of the best cooking of the year.

Coffee for two hours. A freddo is a place to sit, not a drink to finish.

Copying those habits will get you better meals in Santorini restaurants than any list of names, because it puts you in the right places at the right hours ordering the right things.

Which Santorini Restaurants Suit Which Occasion?

The one big dinner

Firostefani or Imerovigli, on the rim, booked, at nine. Same caldera as Oia, calmer room, noticeably lower bill. If it has to be Oia, book weeks ahead and accept the premium.

The best meal of the week

Exo Gonia or Pyrgos, at lunch, with a bottle of Assyrtiko and no plan for the afternoon. This is where the Santorini restaurants that locals actually recommend are.

Fish

Ammoudi for the setting, Vlychada for the fish. Late lunch at both.

With children

Kamari or Perissa beach front, early, where nobody minds noise and there is sand to run on afterwards. Monolithos if they are very small. Monolithos.

Cheap and excellent

Gyros in Fira or Karterados, eaten standing up. Nothing on the rim comes close on value.

A long lunch with wine

A winery. Someone else drives, the food is designed around the wine, and the view is over the vines rather than the crowd. Wine tour.

Honeymoon

One rim dinner, one Ammoudi lunch, and the rest inland. Couples who do the reverse spend three times as much and eat worse.

A group or a celebration

An inland taverna with a long table, ordering mezedes for the middle. Call ahead, tell them the number, and let them feed you.

Late at night

Fira, and effectively only Fira. It has the only late-night Santorini restaurants on the island. Everywhere else on the island stops serving by about eleven.

Breakfast

A village bakery. Bougatsa and a coffee for a fraction of a hotel buffet.

What About Coffee, Bars and Sweets?

Coffee

Freddo espresso and freddo cappuccino are the national drinks in summer and every kafeneio makes them properly. A frappe is the older version and still everywhere. Greek coffee, briki-made, is for sitting down with.

Bakeries and sweets

Bougatsa, galaktoboureko, loukoumades, and in December melomakarona and kourabiedes. Every village bakery does at least three of these well.

Bars

Fira has the rim bars and the island’s only real late nightlife. Perissa and Perivolos have beach bars that run late in season. Oia closes early on purpose. Imerovigli and the villages are quiet by midnight.

Wine bars

Fira and Oia both have serious ones, pouring flights of Assyrtiko, Nykteri, Mavrotragano and Vinsanto. A good alternative to a full tasting if you have no driver.

Beach clubs

Perivolos and Vlychada, running from late morning to the evening in season. Food is incidental; the loungers are the product.

What to drink

Assyrtiko with everything from the sea. Vinsanto after dinner, once. Ouzo or tsipouro with mezedes if you like anise. Local beer is decent and cheap, and the tap water is desalinated so drink bottled.

Santorini Restaurants by Budget

Under ten euro a head

Gyros, souvlaki, bakery food and a supermarket beach lunch. The cheapest Santorini restaurants are the ones without tables, and they are genuinely good.

Fifteen to twenty-five a head

A village taverna: salad, two mezedes, a shared main and house wine. This band contains most of the Santorini restaurants worth going out of your way for.

Twenty-five to forty a head

Beach fronts, the better inland kitchens, a winery lunch, and fish at Vlychada. The best value-for-quality band on the island.

Forty to seventy a head

Caldera-view Santorini restaurants at Firostefani and Imerovigli, and fish at Ammoudi with a bottle of Assyrtiko.

Seventy and upwards

Oia at sunset, tasting menus, and the island’s serious fine dining. Worth it once and unnecessary twice.

How the bands actually behave

The jump from the second band to the fourth buys you a view rather than better cooking. The jump from the first to the second buys you a proper meal. That is the whole economics of Santorini restaurants in two sentences, and it is why the advice on this page keeps coming back to the same thing: pay for the view deliberately, once, and eat inland the rest of the week.

Where Should You Eat on Each Kind of Day?

Most people plan their sightseeing and let lunch happen to them. Reversing that produces a better week, because the good Santorini restaurants are not where the sights are.

An Akrotiri and south coast day

The site in the morning, the lighthouse or Red Beach late morning, then inland to Megalochori or Emporio for lunch. Both are ten minutes from Akrotiri and neither has a queue. Akrotiri.

An Ancient Thira and east coast day

The site early, before it closes in the early afternoon, then down to Kamari for lunch on the front, or up to Exo Gonia if you want the better meal. Ancient Thira.

A wine day

Three estates with a driver, and lunch at one of them. This is the one day where the eating and the sightseeing are the same thing.

A beach day

Perissa, Perivolos or Vlychada, and eat on the front where you are. Vlychada is the better food; Perivolos is the better beach.

A caldera villages day

Fira and the rim walk in the morning, inland for lunch, back to Oia after six. Eating in Oia or Fira at one o’clock in August is the most reliable way to have a bad meal expensively.

A boat day

Lunch is usually cooked on board. Eat light in the evening, in a village, at nine.

A cruise day

Fifteen minutes inland from the cable car: Megalochori, Pyrgos or Exo Gonia. You get a real meal and you avoid the two busiest villages on the island at their busiest hour. Cruise guide.

An arrival or departure day

Do not book any of the Santorini restaurants. Bakery, gyros or whatever is nearest. Every attempt to have a memorable meal on a travel day is a wasted booking.

How Do You Find a Good Place Without a List?

Lists of Santorini restaurants go out of date fast – kitchens change hands, chefs move, a place that was superb in 2022 is ordinary now. These habits work permanently.

Walk one lane back. Anywhere on the rim, in any village, in any beach front. Frontage costs money and somebody has to pay it.

Ask a driver, not a hotel desk. Drivers eat out constantly and have no commission arrangement. Hotel desks often do.

Look at half past nine. Santorini restaurants fill on Greek time. Walk past at nine forty-five and see who is inside.

Check the fava. It is the cheapest thing on the menu and it tells you everything about the kitchen.

Follow the wineries. Estates recommend the places their own people eat.

Read recent reviews only. Anything older than a season is unreliable here.

Trust the village over the name. A mediocre taverna in Emporio will still feed you better and cheaper than a well-reviewed one on the rim.

Applying those five minutes of judgement will beat any published list of Santorini restaurants, including this page, because it works on the island as it is this week rather than as somebody found it two summers ago.

What Changed in the Last Few Years?

Worth knowing if you last came before the pandemic, because Santorini restaurants have shifted in three visible ways.

Upwards. There are considerably more serious Santorini restaurants than there were a decade ago, with proper wine programmes and cooking that takes the island’s own ingredients seriously rather than treating them as garnish. That is a real improvement.

More expensive on the rim. Caldera frontage has gone up faster than anything else, and the gap between rim and village prices is wider than it has ever been.

Busier earlier. Booking windows that used to be a day are now a week for anything with a view in August.

More inland options. Pyrgos, Megalochori and Exo Gonia have all gained places aimed at visitors who have worked out that inland is better value, which is good for choice and has pushed prices up a little there too.

What has not changed. The village taverna cooking for its neighbours, at nine at night, with a short menu and a jug of wine. That is still the best meal on the island and it still costs a third of the rim.

The One-Paragraph Version

Eat inland, at nine, sharing mezedes, with house wine, and order fava first. Do one caldera dinner in Firostefani or Imerovigli rather than Oia, booked for half past nine. Have one late lunch at Ammoudi or Vlychada with fish chosen at the counter and priced by the kilo. Buy your wine at the estate. Skip the hotel breakfast for a bakery. Do that and the island’s reputation for expensive, indifferent food will make no sense to you at all, because you will have spent the week eating in the Santorini restaurants that the fifteen thousand people who live here actually use.

A Week of Eating, Planned

One worked plan for a week of Santorini restaurants, so the advice above is concrete rather than abstract.

Day 1, arrival. Late and tired. Eat wherever you are staying, or gyros in Fira. Do not waste a booking on the day you land.

Day 2. Bakery breakfast. Lunch in Megalochori after the morning’s sightseeing. Dinner at a village taverna in Pyrgos, at nine.

Day 3. Beach day at Perissa or Kamari, lunch on the front. Dinner in Fira, one lane back from the rim.

Day 4. Winery lunch, long, with a driver. Something light in the evening.

Day 5. Late lunch at Ammoudi with fish chosen at the counter, then the walk back up. Nothing in the evening.

Day 6. The one big dinner: Firostefani or Imerovigli, booked, at nine, with the caldera in front of you.

Day 7. Emporio or Exo Gonia for a last long lunch, and a bakery for the flight.

That is one rim dinner, one fish lunch, one winery and four village meals. It is roughly half the cost of seven rim dinners and it is a considerably better week of food. Almost every complaint about Santorini restaurants comes from doing the opposite.

Santorini Restaurants: Frequently Asked Questions

Where are the best restaurants in Santorini? The inland villages – Pyrgos, Exo Gonia, Megalochori and Emporio – for food and value, Ammoudi and Vlychada for fish, and Firostefani or Imerovigli for a caldera view without the Oia premium.

Is eating in Santorini expensive? On the caldera rim, yes, two to three times inland prices. Everywhere else it is priced like the rest of Greece. Eating inland roughly halves a week’s food bill.

What should I eat in Santorini? Fava, tomatokeftedes, white aubergine, chloro cheese, capers and fresh fish, with Assyrtiko to drink and Vinsanto afterwards.

Do I need to book? For a caldera view in July and August, several days ahead, and weeks ahead in Oia for sunset. For village tavernas, a call the same morning is enough.

What time do people eat dinner? Nine, and the busiest hour is half past nine to eleven. A restaurant full at seven is cooking for tourists.

Are Santorini restaurants good for vegetarians? Very. Greek Lenten cooking is essentially vegan and every taverna carries fava, gigantes, dolmades, briam, horta and grilled vegetables as standard.

Where should cruise passengers eat? Inland, fifteen minutes from Fira, at Megalochori, Pyrgos or Exo Gonia. A third of the rim price and no queue.

Is the fish fresh? At the harbour tavernas at Ammoudi and Vlychada, yes, and it is priced by the kilo. Ask the price per kilo and the weight before you agree – this is normal.

How much should I tip? Tipping is not obligatory in Greece. Rounding up is normal and ten percent is generous.

Can I drink the tap water? The island runs largely on desalination. Drink bottled.

Are restaurants open in winter? Enough of them in Fira and the inland villages. Oia and the beach fronts largely close from November to March.

What is the single best food decision here? Eating away from the caldera. Everything else on this page is detail.

Eat Where the Island Eats

We are a local operator and we drive guests to these Santorini restaurants every week. If you want a food day rather than a sightseeing day, we will build one: two wineries, a long lunch inland, and nobody driving afterwards.

Tell us your dates, where you are staying and what you have already booked. Prices are per vehicle rather than per person, so a family of four pays what a couple pays, hotel pickup anywhere on the island is included, and an 80 EUR deposit confirms a date.

See the food and wine experience, the food and fun tours, the full list of tours, or the FAQ.

Every Village and Site on the Island

Any of these can be built into a private day. Each has its own page with what to see and how long to allow.

Caldera villages: Fira · Firostefani · Imerovigli · Oia · Finikia · Baxedes

Inland villages: Pyrgos · Megalochori · Emporio · Mesaria · Karterados · Vothonas · Vourvoulos · Exo Gonia · Mesa Gonia · Pigadia

Beaches: Perissa · Perivolos · Kamari · Vlychada · Monolithos · Red Beach · White Beach · Agios Georgios · Agia Paraskevi

Sites and landmarks: Akrotiri · Ancient Thira · Akrotiri Lighthouse · Nea Kameni · Palia Kameni · Thirasia · Athinios Port

All our tours: All Santorini tours · Full day tour · Sightseeing tour · Personalised tour · North part tour · Horse riding · South part tour · Sunset tour · Shore excursion · Caldera tour · Food experience · Wine tour · Historical tour · Small group tour

Planning and services: Famous sights tour · Private transfers · Transfers to Oia and Finikia · Transfers to other villages · Villages of Santorini · History of Santorini · Tours near you · Languages we guide in · Food and fun tours · Gay friendly tours · Our tour buses · Daily tours · Day tours · FAQ · Gallery · Tour photo gallery · About us · Contact · Blog