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Restaurants and Taverns in Panteli

Except for one lunch in Alinda, where I didn't notice the name of the tavern, we only ate out in Panteli, the small fishing village near the main town Platanos. Many locals visit these taverns too, and that is usually a quality assurance.

The restaurants are in the bay, right by the beach. There are tables on the beach, and it is very romantic to sit here listening to the sea and watching the lights reflected in the evening-dark water.

Panteli is a fishing village, so not surprisingly fish have a prominent place on the daily menus. However we are not impressed by their fish. They taste okay, but are generally small with many bones. I guess we are spoilt by living close to the North Sea.

All the restaurants we visited served soggy and depressing fries to almost everything. Maybe they think that tourists cannot eat "real" potatoes? Otherwise it was excellent Greek food.

For more details about the places you can read my travelogue - the purpose of this page is to give a quick overview.

Psaropoulos

Psaropoulos was the only place we visited more than once. Energy-saving bulbs light the porch, and their hard light isn't cosy, but the food and the service is good.

I recommend their long fried meat dishes. We had various long fried goat and veal dishes, and they were all very tender and delicious. In some of the dishes the tomato sauce has a piquant hint of cinnamon.

For starters we especially enjoyed their delicious rolls of filo dough filled with spinach and feta cheese or bacon and feta.

The only disappointment was my souvlaki (pork on a skewer), which was dry and fried much too long - probably due to bad timing, because Helle had ordered long fried goat.

Zorbas

Locals as well as tourists visit Zorbas. I was there only once and had an excellent Greek salad.

Zorbas' homepage

Drosia

Okay taramosalata (roe salad) and excellent long fried lamb. As a nice touch we were asked, if we wanted the house red chilled or not.

That we were tricked to visit, was not nice. As we were studying the menu "blackboard" the owner/waiter told us that there was a traditional local speciality on todays' menu.

That sounded fine, but when the time came to order, the speciality was suddenly sold out. It was early in the evening, and there were hardly any customers, so we didn't believe him for a second. However the lamb we had instead was excellent.

Patimenos

We dined here the first evening. Delicious and huge portion of Greek salad. Helle's local speciality was pork and vegetables in a kind of "sausage" made of baking paper. It was good, and she needed help from the cats to finish. My long fried pork was disappointing - mostly cartilage, fat and bones.

Castelo

More a café than a restaurant. Nice tables with comfortable chairs and a nice view over the bay.

The Local Joint

I don't know the name of the place or if it even has a name. The porch has a roof of dried palm leaves, and this is where the local men hang out, talking and playing backgammon.

Here we had more than one ouzo aperitif while enjoying the blue hour. 2 euros for 2 adult ouzo is reasonable, and our budget wasn't destroyed when another waiter asked for 3 euro one evening.

You can also eat there, but we didn't try. There is no menu, but you have a word with the waiter, and then another guy grills the fish just with sparks flying everywhere.