Is it easy to eat vegetarian or vegan in Santorini?

Yes. Fava, gigantes, briam, gemista, horta and the local salads are vegetarian, and the Orthodox fasting dishes, the nistisima, are vegan.

Santorini Restaurants: Where to Eat, Area by Area

Eating out here is not difficult, but it is easy to do badly. The island has several hundred places to eat, they are wildly uneven in quality and price, and the ones with the best view are almost never the ones with the best food. This guide to Santorini restaurants is written by people who live here and eat here in February as well as August, and it is organised by where you actually are rather than by a ranking nobody can verify. Our Santorini Tours drivers drop guests at these places every week and hear what came back.

The structure is simple. First how eating out works on this island, what it costs and what is worth ordering. Then Santorini restaurants area by area, from Oia down to the south coast. Then the categories people actually search for: caldera views, seafood, value, vegetarian, breakfast, families and fine dining. There is a booking section at the end, because in July and August that is the part that catches people out.

How Santorini Restaurants Actually Work

A few structural things are worth knowing before you book anything, because they explain most of the complaints visitors have.

The season is short and it matters. Most Santorini restaurants open somewhere between late March and early May and close between late October and early November. In winter perhaps a dozen places stay open across the whole island, almost all of them in Fira and the inland villages where people actually live. If you are travelling in the shoulder months, check before you plan an evening around a specific place, and read our winter guide if you are coming out of season.

The view is priced separately. This is the single most useful fact about Santorini restaurants. A caldera terrace adds a substantial premium to every plate on the menu, and it is charged whether or not the kitchen is any good. Some of the view restaurants are excellent. Many are ordinary food with an extraordinary backdrop, and they survive because the backdrop is genuinely worth something.

Reservations are not optional in high season. From late June to early September the good places are booked days ahead for the sunset slot, and walking up at eight in the evening in Oia will get you a two hour wait or a table with no view. Book.

Service is relaxed by northern European standards. Nobody will rush you, and nobody will bring the bill until you ask. This is not inattention. A long dinner is the point.

Cash still helps. Card acceptance is close to universal now, but small village tavernas sometimes have a minimum, and the fish places at Amoudi occasionally have a machine that is having a bad day.

What Eating Out Costs

Prices at Santorini restaurants vary more by location than by quality, which is not true of most places. These are realistic per person figures for a main course plus a share of a starter and a drink, in high season.

Type of place	Per person	Where
Village taverna, no view	€20 to €30	Pyrgos, Emporio, Megalochori, Exo Gonia
Beach taverna	€25 to €40	Kamari, Perissa, Vlychada
Fira, no caldera view	€25 to €40	Back streets and the market area
Caldera terrace, mid range	€45 to €70	Fira, Firostefani, Imerovigli
Fish taverna by the water	€45 to €80	Amoudi Bay, Vlychada marina
Oia caldera terrace	€60 to €100	Oia rim
Fine dining, tasting menu	€110 upwards	Imerovigli, Oia, Megalochori

Two things push the average up without anyone noticing. Fresh fish is almost always sold by the kilo rather than by the portion, so ask the price before it goes on the grill. And a bottle of good Assyrtiko at a caldera restaurant costs roughly what the same bottle costs at the winery gate multiplied by three.

If you are keeping the budget down, our budget guide covers the whole trip, and the short version for Santorini restaurants is: eat lunch on the rim if you want the view, and dinner inland where the food is better and the bill is half.

What to Order: the Island’s Own Produce

Santorini grows almost nothing with irrigation, because there is no fresh water to speak of. Everything survives on the humidity the volcanic soil traps overnight, and the result is a handful of ingredients that taste like nowhere else in Greece. Good Santorini restaurants build their menus around them; weak ones serve the same moussaka you would get anywhere.

Fava. Not broad beans. A yellow split pea grown here since antiquity, cooked to a purÃ©e and served warm with olive oil, onion and capers. It has a protected designation of origin. Order it everywhere.

Tomatokeftedes. Tomato fritters, sometimes translated on menus as tomato balls, made with the island’s small, intense, low water tomato. When they are made with the real thing they are extraordinary; when they are made with imported tomatoes they are stodge.

White aubergine. Sweeter and less bitter than the purple kind, and grown almost nowhere else. Usually served grilled or in a spread.

Caper leaves. Pickled, sharp, and used in salads instead of or alongside the capers themselves.

Chloro cheese. A fresh, soft, slightly sour goat cheese made on the island. It turns up in the tomato fritters and in the local version of a Greek salad.

Apochti. Cured pork loin, salted and vinegar washed. Not on every menu and worth ordering when it is.

The wine. Assyrtiko, grown in low basket shaped vines on ungrafted rootstock, bone dry and mineral. Vinsanto is the sweet sun dried version. Our wine tour and food experience exist to explain both properly rather than over a menu.

A practical test for any of the Santorini restaurants you are considering: look for fava, tomatokeftedes and chloro on the menu. If all three are there, someone in the kitchen cares about where they are.

Santorini Restaurants in Oia

Oia has the highest concentration of expensive tables on the island and the highest variance in what you get for the money. The Santorini restaurants along the caldera rim here are selling a seat at the most photographed sunset in Europe, and the good ones know that the food has to justify the second half of the bill.

The rim terraces. These run along the western edge from the castle down towards the main square. Expect a hard reservation policy, a sunset sitting and a later sitting, and a minimum spend at some of them in August. Book at least three days ahead in high season and ask specifically for a front row table, because the second row sees considerably less than the photographs suggest.

The main street. Behind the rim, the pedestrian spine has a run of places with no view and much saner prices. Quality here is genuinely mixed. The test is whether the menu is written in six languages with photographs, which is a reliable warning, or whether it is short and seasonal, which is a reliable good sign.

The back lanes towards Finikia. Walk five minutes inland and east and the pricing changes completely. This is where people who work in Oia eat, and it is the best value in the village by a distance.

The practical advice for Oia. Have lunch on a terrace when it is quiet and the light is good, and have dinner somewhere else. Sunset dinner in Oia in August means a crowded terrace, a fixed menu, a queue at the door and a bill that will surprise you. If the sunset is the point, watch it from the castle and eat afterwards, or take it from the water on a boat. Our page on the best sunset spots covers the alternatives.

Amoudi Bay: the Fish Tavernas

Amoudi, spelt Ammoudi on some maps and menus, is the old harbour of Oia and the best known place to eat fish on the island.

Below Oia, at the bottom of roughly three hundred steps, Amoudi Bay holds four or five fish tavernas built onto the rock at the water’s edge. These are among the best known Santorini restaurants on the island and they deserve most of the reputation.

The format is the same at each. You are shown the catch, you choose the fish, it is weighed in front of you and grilled whole. There will be fava, a tomato salad, grilled octopus hung out to dry on a line beside the terrace, and very cold white wine. The tables at the far end sit close enough to the water that the sea occasionally reaches them.

Ask the price per kilo before you agree to the fish. This is not a scam, it is simply how fish is sold in Greece, but a large fish for two people can turn a reasonable dinner into a serious one. A kilo feeds two comfortably.

Getting down and back. The steps from Oia take about fifteen minutes down and rather longer up. There is a road for taxis and cars, and parking at the bottom is very limited. Donkeys are offered and we would rather you did not, for reasons our piece on the donkey weight limit sets out. Most of our guests get driven down and walk up, or the reverse.

Timing. Lunch at Amoudi is calmer and cheaper than dinner. Dinner here after sunset, with the cliff going dark above you, is one of the better evenings on the island and needs booking in July and August.

Santorini Restaurants in Fira and Firostefani

Fira is the capital, the busiest village and the one place that functions all year. It has the widest range of Santorini restaurants at the widest range of prices, and it splits cleanly into three zones.

The caldera edge. A near continuous line of terraces from the cable car station south. Views are excellent, prices are high but below Oia, and the standard is more consistent than the reputation suggests. This is the best place on the island to have a mid range dinner with the full caldera in front of you.

The market and the back streets. Two minutes inland the prices halve. There are grill houses, gyros counters, bakeries and a handful of small places serving proper cooked food to people who live here. This is where to eat if you are on the island for a week rather than three days.

Firostefani. The next village north, a fifteen minute walk along the rim, and quieter than Fira with the same view. Several of the better value caldera terraces are here rather than in Fira proper, and it is a considerably more pleasant walk home.

Fira also has the most reliable late food on the island, which matters if you are out. Our nightlife guide covers where that is.

Imerovigli and the Fine Dining End

Imerovigli sits at the highest point of the caldera rim, above Firostefani, and it is the quietest of the three rim villages. It is also where several of the island’s serious kitchens are, because the hotels here are the expensive ones and they brought chefs with them.

If you want a tasting menu, a wine pairing and a kitchen doing something more ambitious than grilled fish, this is the first place to look. Expect to book well ahead, expect a set format rather than a menu, and expect the bill that goes with it. Several of these restaurants are attached to hotels and are open to non residents, which people often do not realise.

Imerovigli also has the best sunset view of the rim villages with a fraction of the Oia crowd, which makes it the single most underrated dinner location on the island. Skaros Rock in the foreground gives the view a subject that Oia’s does not have.

Inland: Pyrgos, Megalochori and Exo Gonia

This is where the food gets better and the bill gets smaller, and it is the part of the island most visitors never eat in.

Pyrgos is the old capital, built in rings around a Venetian castle, and it has several of the best Santorini restaurants on the island in and around the square below the fortress. There is no caldera view from the village itself, but there is a long view east across the whole island and out to sea, which at sunset is arguably better because you can see the light rather than stare into it.

Megalochori is smaller, prettier and quieter, with a handful of places around the bell tower square and a couple of ambitious kitchens attached to boutique hotels. It is ten minutes from Fira and feels like a different island.

Exo Gonia and Vothonas. Two villages on the road between Fira and Kamari that almost nobody stops in, with a small number of long established tavernas cooking for locals. If you want the version of Santorini restaurants that has not adjusted its prices for tourism, this is it.

Emporio. The largest inland village, with a genuine medieval core, a castle you can walk into and a square with tavernas that stay open in winter. Good for lunch on a south of the island day, which our south part tour is built around.

Santorini Restaurants at Kamari and Perissa

The two big black sand resorts on the east and south coasts have the highest concentration of casual Santorini restaurants on the island, and the lowest concentration of ambition. That is not a complaint. These are beach tavernas, and a good beach taverna doing grilled fish and a cold beer at two in the afternoon is one of the better things about a Greek holiday.

Kamari has a paved promenade running the length of the beach with a continuous line of tavernas, bars and cafes facing the sea. Quality across these Santorini restaurants ranges from excellent to indifferent within fifty metres, and the reliable signal is how many Greek families are eating there at half past two. Prices are moderate, portions are large, and almost all of them will feed children without fuss.

Perissa and its continuation at Perivolos work the same way with a slightly younger crowd and a run of beach clubs at the Perivolos end that serve food to sunbeds. The Santorini restaurants along this strip are good for a long lunch and less interesting in the evening, when most of the island’s better kitchens are elsewhere.

What to order at the beach. Grilled octopus, a Santorini salad with caper leaves and chloro, fava, and whatever small fish is on the board that day. Skip the international menu section. Every one of these Santorini restaurants has one and none of them do it well.

One warning. Some of the beachfront places charge for a sunbed unless you eat, and some fold the sunbed into the bill either way. Ask.

The South Coast: Vlychada, Akrotiri and the West

The south of the island has fewer Santorini restaurants than anywhere else and a couple of the more interesting ones.

Vlychada has a small marina with two or three fish places that feel like a working harbour rather than a resort. The Santorini restaurants here are quieter and cheaper than Amoudi with a similar format, and the drive down is part of the appeal. Several close outside the main season.

Around Akrotiri, the options thin out to a handful of tavernas near the archaeological site and a cluster below the lighthouse. There is one genuinely well known fish restaurant on the water at the western end of the south coast which has been there for decades, and it is worth the drive if you are in the area at lunchtime.

Near Red Beach and the caldera side of the south there is very little, so plan lunch rather than assume it. Anyone doing a south of the island day should build the meal into the route, which is one reason our guests take a driver: the Santorini restaurants worth stopping at down here are not the ones you pass first.

Santorini Restaurants With a Caldera View

This is the single most searched category, so it is worth being blunt about it. Not all caldera views are the same, and the price does not track the quality of the view or the food reliably.

Oia. The sunset view itself, the highest prices and the hardest bookings. Worth doing once. Among Santorini restaurants generally, these are the ones where you are most clearly paying for the seat.

Imerovigli. The best combination of view and food on the rim, with Skaros Rock in the frame and a fraction of the crowd. If somebody asked us for one caldera dinner, this is where we would send them.

Firostefani. The value option on the rim. Same view as Fira, quieter, and several terraces that are noticeably cheaper than their neighbours a few hundred metres south.

Fira. The widest choice and the most consistent mid range standard. Also the noisiest.

What to ask when you book. Whether the table is on the front row, whether there is a minimum spend, and whether there is a fixed sitting time. All three are common at view restaurants in August and all three are the sort of thing people find out at the door.

The cheaper way to get the same view. Coffee or a drink at a caldera terrace in the late afternoon costs a fraction of dinner and the view is identical. A lot of experienced visitors do exactly that, then eat inland. Our free things to do guide takes the same approach to the rest of the island.

Seafood and Fish

Fish is the thing the island does best, and the Santorini restaurants that specialise in it are concentrated in three places: Amoudi below Oia, the Vlychada marina on the south coast, and a small number of places at Akrotiri and along the east coast.

Almost all fresh fish in Greece is sold by weight. The waiter will bring the tray, you pick, it goes on the scale, and the price is per kilo. This is the correct way to buy fish and it is also how a two hundred euro dinner for two happens by accident. Confirm the weight and the price per kilo before it is cooked.

What is genuinely local. The Aegean is not a rich sea and a good deal of what is served is imported or farmed, which is normal and not dishonest. Ask what came off a boat here today. The answer is usually a short list, and taking it is almost always the better dinner.

Octopus. Hung to dry on a line in the sun, then grilled. It is on the menu at essentially all of the Santorini restaurants near the water and it is the best value seafood on the island.

Sea urchin, when it appears. Occasional, seasonal and worth ordering.

Where to Eat Well Without the View Premium

If you want the best food per euro on the island, ignore the rim entirely. The Santorini restaurants that locals use are inland, and the difference in price for the same quality is close to a factor of two.

Pyrgos and Megalochori for a proper dinner. Exo Gonia, Vothonas and Karterados for the version with no tourists in it at all. The Fira back streets for grill houses and cooked food at lunchtime. Emporio for a village square with a castle behind it.

The other reliable value move is lunch rather than dinner. Many of the better Santorini restaurants run a shorter, cheaper menu in the middle of the day with the same kitchen, and the terrace that is fully booked at eight is half empty at one.

Gyros and souvlaki deserve a mention. There are several excellent counters in Fira and one or two in every village, a portion costs a fraction of a restaurant plate, and nobody will think less of you. On a long day out this is what our drivers eat.

Fine Dining and Tasting Menus

The island has a genuine fine dining scene now, which was not true fifteen years ago. The serious Santorini restaurants in this category cluster in Imerovigli, Oia and Megalochori, and most of them are attached to hotels.

What to expect: a set tasting menu of six to ten courses, an optional wine pairing built around Assyrtiko and Vinsanto, a heavy emphasis on the island’s own produce, and a bill starting somewhere north of a hundred and ten euro per person before wine. Bookings open weeks ahead in summer and the good ones fill.

Whether it is worth it depends on what you want from the evening. These kitchens are technically excellent and the produce genuinely is unusual, so a tasting menu here is not the same experience you would get in any other resort. But some of the most memorable meals on this island happen at a plastic table in a village square, and among all the Santorini restaurants we send people to, the expensive ones are not automatically the ones they talk about afterwards.

If you want the food and wine side done properly without a formal dinner, our private food experience visits producers rather than restaurants, which is a different and in some ways better way in.

Wineries That Serve Food

Several of the island’s wineries run restaurants or long tasting lunches, and these are among the more interesting Santorini restaurants precisely because they are not restaurants first.

The format varies. Some do a simple plate of local cheese, tomato fritters and fava alongside a flight. Others run a full kitchen with a terrace looking across the vineyards to the sea. Most are open from late morning to sunset rather than into the evening, which makes them a lunch or late afternoon option rather than a dinner one.

The vineyards are inland and south, around Pyrgos, Megalochori, Exo Gonia and Akrotiri, so a winery lunch fits naturally into a day that also takes in the archaeological sites. That is exactly how our wine tour is routed, and it is one of the few ways to visit three or four producers without anyone having to drive.

What makes the wine unusual. The vines are trained into low baskets called kouloura, coiled on the ground so the fruit sits inside protected from the wind and collecting the night humidity. The rootstock is ungrafted, because phylloxera never took hold in volcanic ash, so some of these vines are extremely old. Assyrtiko grown this way is high in acid, low in aroma and mineral in a way that suits everything the Santorini restaurants around it are serving.

Vegetarian and Vegan Options

Greek cooking is unusually good for vegetarians and better still during the fasting periods of the Orthodox calendar, when a whole category of dishes contains no animal products at all. Most Santorini restaurants will feed a vegetarian very well without any special arrangement.

The reliable dishes: fava, gigantes, briam, gemista, dolmades made without meat, horta, fried courgette, tomato fritters, and every version of the local salad. Ask for the nistisima, the fasting dishes, and you will usually be pointed at the vegan section of the menu without it being labelled as one.

Dedicated vegetarian and vegan Santorini restaurants exist now in Fira, Oia and one or two of the villages, and they are good, but they are not necessary. The traditional kitchen already covers it.

Gluten free and allergies. Awareness is decent and improving. Grilled fish and meat, the vegetable dishes and the salads are naturally safe. Be specific rather than general when you ask, and write it down if there is a language gap.

Breakfast, Brunch and Coffee

Breakfast is the one meal where the island genuinely lags. Most hotels serve their own, most Santorini restaurants do not open until midday, and the traditional Greek answer to breakfast is a coffee and a cigarette rather than a plate.

What does exist: bakeries in every village doing bougatsa, spanakopita, tyropita and koulouri from early morning, which is the best and cheapest breakfast on the island. A growing number of brunch places in Fira and Oia doing eggs and specialty coffee at northern European prices. And hotel terraces, several of which serve non residents.

Coffee. Freddo espresso and freddo cappuccino are the national drink between April and October and every kiosk makes them. A Greek coffee, briki brewed and served with the grounds, is the traditional version and is worth ordering at least once in a village square.

If you are heading out early for sunrise or a boat, buy pastries the night before. Very little is open at five in the morning.

Santorini Restaurants for Families

Eating out with children here is straightforward, and considerably easier than the cliff villages are in every other respect. Greek restaurants are genuinely welcoming to children rather than merely tolerant of them, nobody minds noise, and late dinners with families at the table are normal.

The practical points. The beach tavernas at Kamari and Perissa are the easiest Santorini restaurants for families: space, high chairs, quick food and somewhere for children to go afterwards. The caldera terraces in Oia are the hardest, because of the drops, the stairs, the fixed sittings and the prices. The inland village squares are the best compromise, with tables outside and somewhere safe to run.

Portions are large and sharing is expected, so ordering fewer plates than people is normal and nobody will comment. Most kitchens will do a plain grilled chicken breast or a plate of pasta for a child without it being on the menu.

Our pages on Santorini with a baby, large families and family tours cover the rest of the trip.

Santorini Restaurants for a Special Occasion

Proposals, anniversaries and honeymoon dinners are a significant share of what the caldera terraces do in summer, and the good Santorini restaurants are extremely used to arranging them.

What is worth asking for when you book: a front row table rather than a second row one, the earlier sitting if you want the sunset itself or the later sitting if you want the terrace quiet, and whether they will do anything with a cake or flowers. Most will, at a price, and most will do it discreetly if you ask them to.

Where to do it. Imerovigli for the view and the food together. Oia if the photographs matter more than the meal. Amoudi at dusk for something less obvious. A winery terrace at golden hour for the most relaxed version. And a village square in Pyrgos if what you actually want is a long dinner with nobody watching.

One honest warning. A sunset proposal on a crowded Oia terrace in August has an audience of several hundred people with cameras. Several of our guests have moved theirs somewhere quieter after seeing it. Our honeymoon guide and private sunset tour cover the alternatives.

Booking, Reservations and Timing

This is the section that saves the most trouble. Santorini restaurants operate very differently in August from how they operate in May, and the mistakes are predictable.

When to book. Caldera terraces in Oia and Imerovigli: three to seven days ahead in July and August, longer for the sunset sitting at the well known places. Fira and Firostefani: a day or two. Inland villages and beach tavernas: usually walk in, though a call the same morning does no harm in August. Fine dining: two to four weeks.

How to book. Most now take reservations by phone, through their own site or through the usual booking platforms. Hotels will do it for you and often get tables that guests cannot. So will we, for guests on a tour, which is the sort of thing a local operator is for.

Sitting times. View restaurants in high season commonly run two sittings, roughly at seven and half past nine. The first one gets the sunset and a firm request to leave; the second gets a quieter terrace and the dark. Decide which you want before you book, because you will not be able to change it on the night.

Minimum spend. Some Oia terraces impose one for the sunset sitting. It is legal, it is usually disclosed, and it is worth asking about rather than discovering.

Turning up without a booking. Entirely fine at most Santorini restaurants outside the rim villages, and a bad idea on the rim between late June and early September. If you are walking in, eat early, around seven, or late, after ten.

What time locals eat. Lunch between two and four, dinner from nine. A restaurant that is empty at eight is not necessarily bad; it may simply be early.

Service, Tipping and Etiquette

A few conventions that differ from what a lot of visitors expect, and that make eating at Santorini restaurants easier once you know them.

Tipping. Service is generally included by law and a tip is appreciated rather than expected. Rounding up, or five to ten per cent for good service, is normal and generous. Nobody will chase you for twenty.

The bill. It will not arrive until you ask. This is politeness, not neglect.

Bread and cover. A small per person charge for bread and service is standard and appears on the bill. It is not a scam.

Sharing. Ordering several dishes for the table and sharing them is the normal way to eat, and most Santorini restaurants are built around it. Ordering a starter and a main each is a foreign habit that leaves a lot of food on the table.

Water. Tap water on the island is desalinated and not generally drunk. Bottled water is served everywhere and costs very little.

Dress. Smart casual is the ceiling almost everywhere, including the expensive places. Nobody wears a jacket.

Mistakes People Make

These are the ones we hear about in the car the next morning.

Eating every dinner on the rim. The view is the same on the third night and the bill is not. Split the week between the caldera and the villages.

Ordering fish without asking the price. The commonest expensive surprise at Santorini restaurants anywhere near the water.

Booking the sunset sitting and expecting a leisurely evening. You will be asked to leave for the second sitting. If you want to linger, take the later slot.

Assuming everything is open in May or October. A significant share of Santorini restaurants are closed either side of the main season, including some famous ones.

Judging a place by its position on the main street. The best food in every village on this island is one street back from wherever the crowd is walking.

Trying to drive to dinner in Oia in August. Parking is genuinely awful. Take a taxi, get dropped off, or let a driver handle it. Our taxi guide and private transfer service cover both.

Santorini Restaurants on a Cruise Day

If you are ashore for seven or eight hours from a ship, the eating problem is different from every other visitor’s. You have one meal, you are on a clock, and the tender queue at the end of the day is not somewhere you want to be late for.

The rule we give cruise guests is to eat early and inland. The Santorini restaurants on the rim are at their most crowded and slowest between one and three, which is exactly when a shore day wants lunch. A village square in Pyrgos or Megalochori will feed you properly in an hour; an Oia terrace in August will take two and a half.

If the caldera view is the point, take coffee or a drink on a Fira terrace instead and eat somewhere else. You get the same photograph for a tenth of the money and a fraction of the time.

Amoudi is a poor cruise day choice unless you have a driver, because of the steps and the road. Our shore excursion builds the meal into the route with the tender times accounted for, and our cruise port guide explains how long the tender and the cable car realistically take.

Late Night, Bakeries and Street Food

Between the restaurants and the bars there is a whole layer of eating on this island that most guides ignore, and it is genuinely good.

Bakeries. Every village has one, they open very early, and they sell bougatsa, cheese pies, spinach pies, koulouri and a range of syrup soaked things for a euro or two. This is the best cheap breakfast on the island and the best thing to take on a boat.

Gyros and souvlaki. Fira has several counters that run late, and Kamari and Perissa have their own. A pork gyros in pita with chips inside it is the standard, and it costs a fraction of anything on a menu at the Santorini restaurants twenty metres away.

Loukoumades. Small fried dough balls in honey and cinnamon, sold from a handful of places in Fira and Oia in the evening. Order them and share.

After midnight. Fira is the only place with reliable late food. Everywhere else shuts. If you are out at a beach club in Perivolos, eat before rather than after.

Self catering. There are proper supermarkets in Fira, Karterados, Kamari and Emporio, a farmers market in Fira in the mornings, and fish sold directly at Vlychada some days. Anyone in a villa or an apartment will find shopping here easy and much cheaper than eating out, which our villa guide touches on.

Santorini Restaurants Out of Season

Between November and March the island empties, and so does the restaurant scene. This is worth planning around rather than discovering.

Roughly a dozen to twenty places stay open across the whole island in deep winter, concentrated in Fira, Karterados, Emporio and Messaria, which is where the year round population actually lives. The rim terraces close almost entirely. Amoudi closes. Most of the beach tavernas at Kamari and Perissa close.

What survives is, in some ways, the better half. The Santorini restaurants that stay open in January are cooking for locals at local prices, the menus are shorter and more seasonal, and you will be the only visitor in the room. Winter is also when the island eats meat and slow cooked food rather than salads and grilled fish.

April and late October are the transition. Most places are open by Greek Easter and most are still open into the third week of October. Either side of that, check. Our winter guide and month by month guide have the detail.

Fitting Meals Into Your Days

The best way to use this page is not to pick a list of Santorini restaurants and then build the days around them, but the reverse. Decide what you are doing, then eat where that puts you.

A caldera day. Fira and the rim path in the morning, lunch on a terrace in Firostefani, Oia in the late afternoon, dinner back in Imerovigli or inland.

A south of the island day. Akrotiri early, the lighthouse, a swim at Vlychada, lunch at the marina or in Emporio, dinner in Megalochori.

A wine day. Two or three wineries between Pyrgos and Akrotiri with a tasting lunch in the middle, then Pyrgos for dinner and the view east.

A boat day. Bakery breakfast, lunch on the boat or at the hot springs stop, dinner at Amoudi if you land at Oia.

A beach day. Kamari or Perissa, taverna lunch on the promenade, and inland for the evening.

Our three day itinerary puts those together in order, and the full day private tour covers the driving so that the choice of Santorini restaurants is the only decision left.

Three Days of Eating at Three Budgets

Abstract price bands are less useful than a worked example, so here is what a day of eating at Santorini restaurants actually looks like at three levels, per person, in high season.

Under thirty euro a day. Bakery breakfast, a cheese pie and a coffee, about four euro. Gyros in pita for lunch with a soft drink, about eight. Dinner at a village taverna sharing three or four dishes, about eighteen. You will eat better than a great many people spending three times that, and the only thing you give up is the terrace.

Around sixty euro a day. Hotel or brunch breakfast. Lunch at a beach taverna at Kamari with a beer, around twenty five. Dinner at one of the mid range Santorini restaurants in Firostefani or Pyrgos with a shared starter and a glass of Assyrtiko, around forty. This is the level most visitors actually eat at and it is comfortable.

A hundred and fifty euro a day and up. Brunch in Oia. Lunch on a caldera terrace or at a winery. Dinner at a rim restaurant in Oia or Imerovigli with a bottle. At the top of this range you are into the tasting menus. There is nothing wrong with this budget and the best Santorini restaurants on the island sit inside it, but the marginal return above about eighty euro is view and service rather than food.

The efficient version, and what most of our repeat guests do, is to mix them. One caldera dinner, one fish dinner at Amoudi or Vlychada, and the rest inland.

How to Judge a Place You Have Not Read About

There are several hundred Santorini restaurants and no list covers them all, so it is more useful to know how to read one from the street than to memorise names.

Good signs. A short menu. A menu that changes. Fava, tomatokeftedes and chloro on it. Greek being spoken at the tables. A full room at half past two in the afternoon, which is when locals eat lunch. Fish on ice that you can see. A handwritten board.

Warning signs. A menu with photographs. A menu in six languages. Someone standing outside inviting you in, which on this island is a reliable indicator. Laminated pages. A menu that runs to forty main courses, because no kitchen this size cooks forty things well.

The one street back rule. In every village here, the Santorini restaurants directly on the tourist path pay the highest rent and cook to the lowest common denominator. Walk one street back and both the price and the quality improve.

Reviews. Useful in aggregate, misleading individually, and heavily skewed towards places with a view. A restaurant with a four point three average and four hundred reviews in a village square is usually a better bet than a four point seven with sixty on the rim.

Menus at Santorini restaurants are almost always translated, but the translations are inconsistent and the Greek is often more informative. A short glossary of what you will actually see.

Mezedes. Small plates meant for sharing. The best way to eat here.

Orektika. Starters.

Tis oras. Grilled to order, usually meat.

Magirefta. Cooked dishes, made in the morning and served at room temperature. This is where the best home cooking is, and visitors skip it because it is not hot.

Horta. Wild greens, boiled, with oil and lemon.

Saganaki. Anything cooked in a small pan, usually fried cheese.

Gemista. Tomatoes and peppers stuffed with rice.

Briam. Baked mixed vegetables.

Nistisima. Fasting dishes, which is to say vegan ones.

Fresko psari. Fresh fish, sold by the kilo.

Ordering two or three mezedes and one magirefto for the table is the local pattern, and most Santorini restaurants will bring them as they are ready rather than in courses. That is intentional.

Drinks: Wine, Beer, Ouzo and Raki

Wine. Assyrtiko with almost anything, and it is the one thing you should drink here rather than at home. Nykteri is the fuller barrel aged version. Vinsanto is the sweet wine made from sun dried grapes and is served at the end. House wine by the half kilo carafe is normal at village Santorini restaurants and is usually decent and very cheap.

Beer. Local Santorini brewing has grown a lot, and the island now makes its own. Ask for what is brewed here rather than the international lagers.

Ouzo and tsipouro. Anise flavoured and grape based respectively, both drunk with food rather than before or after it. Ordered by the small bottle, with ice and water, and with mezedes on the table.

Raki. Often brought free at the end of the meal along with something sweet. Accepting it is polite and refusing it is fine.

Coffee. Freddo espresso all summer. Greek coffee in a village square. Filter coffee is uncommon and generally poor.

Groups, Private Dining and Special Requests

Larger parties are easier here than in most places, because Greek eating is built around big tables. Most Santorini restaurants will take a group of eight to twelve with notice, and several of the inland tavernas will happily do twenty with a set menu agreed in advance.

For weddings, birthdays and corporate dinners, the wineries and the boutique hotel restaurants are the usual answer, and both do private hire. Our page on getting married here covers that end of it.

If you are a group of any size, transport is the harder problem rather than the table. Taxis are scarce, parking in the rim villages is minimal, and splitting a group across three cars at eleven at night in Oia does not work. This is one of the more practical things a local operator handles: our private transfer service does evening runs, and guests on our tours regularly ask the driver to book the table as well.

Eating Near the Airport and the Ports

Arrival and departure days are when people eat worst here, because the obvious options around the transport hubs are the weakest Santorini restaurants on the island. A little planning fixes it.

The airport. There is very little inside the terminal and what there is closes with the last flight. Kamari is five minutes away and has a full promenade of tavernas; Messaria and Monolithos are closer still and cheaper. If you have a late flight, eat in Kamari rather than at the airport, and read our airport guide for how early you actually need to be there.

Athinios, the ferry port. This is the weakest spot on the island for food. There are a couple of cafes above the quay serving what you would expect from a place that knows you have no alternative. Eat before you go down, or buy something in Fira. Our ferry guide covers the timing.

The old port below Fira. Where cruise tenders land. A handful of places at the bottom of the cable car, aimed squarely at a captive audience. Go up first.

The rule. None of the Santorini restaurants worth eating at are within sight of a departure gate or a ferry ramp. Ten minutes of driving in any direction solves it, which is one of the things a transfer driver can do without being asked twice.

What Has Changed Recently

Anyone who came here a decade ago will find the eating noticeably different, and the changes are worth knowing about because a lot of older advice about Santorini restaurants is now out of date.

Prices on the rim have risen sharply. Faster than in the rest of Greece and faster than the quality has. The gap between a caldera terrace and a village taverna is wider than it was.

The cooking has got better. There is a generation of Greek chefs who trained abroad and came back, and the island now has kitchens that would be taken seriously anywhere. That was not true before.

The wine is taken seriously now. Assyrtiko has an international reputation, the wineries have invested, and the wine list at the better Santorini restaurants reflects it.

Booking has become essential. Ten years ago you walked in almost anywhere. In August you no longer can, on the rim.

The season has lengthened. More places now open in April and stay open into November than used to, which makes the shoulder months a considerably better bet than they once were.

What We Tell Guests in the Car

The question comes up on every tour, usually somewhere between Akrotiri and the winery, and the answer is short.

Eat one dinner on the caldera because you came a long way to see it, and pick Imerovigli rather than Oia unless the photographs matter. Eat one dinner at the water, at Amoudi or Vlychada, and ask the price of the fish. Eat everything else inland, where the Santorini restaurants are cooking for people who live here.

Have lunch, not dinner, at the places with the famous views. Go to a bakery in the morning. Order the fava, the tomatokeftedes and whatever is on the handwritten board. Drink the local wine rather than something you recognise.

And book the rim tables before you fly, because the good ones are gone by the time you land. If you are travelling with us, ask the driver. Knowing which of the Santorini restaurants still has a table on a Tuesday in August is exactly the sort of thing a local operator knows and a booking site does not.

A Village by Village Summary

If you only remember one section, make it this one. Every village on the island has a different answer to where to eat, and the Santorini restaurants in each are aimed at different people.

Where	Best for	Price
Oia rim	Sunset, occasions, photographs	Highest
Oia back lanes	Good food without the terrace premium	Moderate
Amoudi Bay	Fresh fish at the water	High
Imerovigli	Best view and food together, fine dining	High
Firostefani	Caldera view at a sane price	Moderate to high
Fira rim	Widest choice with a view	Moderate to high
Fira back streets	Grills, gyros, everyday food, late night	Low
Pyrgos	Serious food, long view east	Moderate
Megalochori	Quiet dinner, boutique kitchens	Moderate to high
Emporio	Village square, open in winter	Low
Exo Gonia, Vothonas, Karterados	Where locals eat	Low
Kamari	Families, promenade lunch	Low to moderate
Perissa and Perivolos	Beach clubs, casual lunch	Low to moderate
Vlychada marina	Fish without the Amoudi crowd	Moderate
Wineries	Tasting lunch, vineyard terrace	Moderate

Used properly, that table answers most questions about Santorini restaurants faster than any ranking could, because the right answer changes with where you are standing and what time it is.

Santorini Restaurants: Common Questions

Where are the best restaurants in Santorini?

For food, the inland villages: Pyrgos, Megalochori and Exo Gonia. For food with a caldera view, Imerovigli. For fresh fish, Amoudi Bay below Oia. The best Santorini restaurants are rarely the ones on the main street of the busiest village.

How expensive are Santorini restaurants?

A village taverna runs twenty to thirty euro per person, a caldera terrace forty five to seventy, an Oia sunset terrace sixty to a hundred, and a tasting menu a hundred and ten upwards. Location drives the price more than quality does.

Do I need to book a table?

On the caldera rim in July and August, yes, three to seven days ahead. Inland and at the beaches, usually not. Fine dining needs two to four weeks.

What food is Santorini known for?

Fava, tomatokeftedes made with the island’s small tomato, white aubergine, caper leaves, chloro cheese, and Assyrtiko wine. Good Santorini restaurants build the menu around them.

Where can I eat with a caldera view?

Oia, Imerovigli, Firostefani and Fira, in descending order of price. Imerovigli gives the best combination of view and cooking; Firostefani is the value option on the rim.

Is Amoudi Bay worth it?

Yes, for the setting and the fish. Ask the price per kilo before the fish is cooked, and arrange transport, because it is three hundred steps below Oia.

What time do people eat dinner in Santorini?

Locals eat from nine in the evening. Restaurants open around seven and run two sittings in high season, roughly seven and half past nine.

Are Santorini restaurants open in winter?

A limited number, mostly in Fira, Karterados, Messaria and Emporio. The caldera terraces, Amoudi and most beach tavernas close between November and March.

Is it easy to eat vegetarian or vegan?

Yes. Fava, gigantes, briam, gemista, horta and the local salads are all vegetarian, and the Orthodox fasting dishes, the nistisima, are vegan. Ask for those by name.

How much should I tip?

Service is generally included. Rounding up or five to ten per cent for good service is normal and appreciated. Nothing more is expected.

Is the fish local?

Some of it. The Aegean is not a rich sea and a share of what is served is imported or farmed. Ask what came off a boat that day and order from that answer.

Can I eat well on a budget?

Easily. Bakeries for breakfast, gyros for lunch, and village tavernas for dinner will keep a day under thirty euro per person while eating better than most people do on the rim.

Are children welcome?

Very. Greek restaurants are genuinely welcoming to children, portions suit sharing, and most kitchens will cook something plain on request.

Do restaurants take cards?

Almost all of them. Carry some cash for small village places and for the fish tavernas, where the machine occasionally fails.

What is the dress code?

Smart casual at the most formal Santorini restaurants and nothing at all elsewhere. Nobody wears a jacket.

Which village is best for a food based trip?

Stay in or near Pyrgos or Megalochori if the eating matters more than the view. You will be ten minutes from the rim and surrounded by the better kitchens.

Santorini Restaurants by Traveller Type

One more way to cut it, because the right answer changes completely depending on who is asking.

Couples on a short romantic trip. One Imerovigli dinner, one evening at Amoudi, and a village square in Megalochori. Of all the Santorini restaurants on the island these three settings give the most variety in three nights.

Families with young children. Kamari promenade for lunch, village squares for dinner, bakeries for breakfast. Avoid the Oia rim entirely. The family friendly Santorini restaurants are almost all at sea level.

Foodies. Stay inland. Pyrgos, Megalochori and Exo Gonia, plus one tasting menu and one winery lunch. The Santorini restaurants worth travelling for are not the ones with the view.

Budget travellers. Bakery, gyros, village taverna, house wine by the carafe. Thirty euro a day eats well. The cheapest Santorini restaurants are also, often, the most honest ones.

Cruise passengers. Early lunch inland, coffee on a Fira terrace for the view, back to the tender with time in hand.

Repeat visitors. Exo Gonia, Vothonas, Karterados and Emporio, plus whatever the winery restaurants are doing that season. These are the Santorini restaurants that reward knowing the island.

Solo travellers. Village tavernas and the Fira back streets, where eating alone is unremarkable, rather than the rim terraces, where the two person table is the whole business model. Our solo travel guide covers the rest.

The Short Version

If you read nothing else, this is the whole page in a dozen lines.

The best Santorini restaurants for food are inland; the best for a view are on the rim; they are almost never the same place.
Imerovigli beats Oia for a caldera dinner on both food and crowd.
Book the rim three to seven days ahead in July and August, or eat before seven.
Ask the price per kilo before the fish is cooked.
Order fava, tomatokeftedes, white aubergine and chloro. Drink Assyrtiko.
Lunch on the terrace, dinner in the village, and the week costs half as much.
Bakeries do the best cheap breakfast on the island.
Locals eat lunch at half past two and dinner from nine.
One street back from the tourist path, every time.
Most Santorini restaurants close between November and March.
Service is included; rounding up is plenty.
The magirefta, the room temperature cooked dishes, are where the real home cooking is.

Everything else on this page is detail on top of those twelve lines, and between them they will get you better meals than any ranked list of Santorini restaurants will.

Why This Page Has No Ranked List

Almost every other guide to Santorini restaurants is a numbered list of names. We have deliberately not written one, and the reason is worth stating plainly.

Restaurants here change hands, change chefs and change standard between one season and the next, and a ranked list of Santorini restaurants published in one year is misleading by the next. Several of the places that topped those lists five years ago are either gone or coasting on the reputation. A page that told you to walk into a specific door would be doing you a disservice within a season or two.

What does not change is the structure: the view is priced separately, the good cooking is inland, the fish is sold by the kilo, locals eat late, and one street back is always better. Those facts about Santorini restaurants were true a decade ago and they will be true a decade from now, and they will get you a better meal than a list will.

The other reason is that we drive guests to these places. If we recommended somewhere because it paid to be recommended, we would hear about it in the car the next morning, and rightly. We do not take commission from any of the Santorini restaurants mentioned in any category on this page, and there are no affiliate links on it.

If you want a name rather than a principle, ask your driver on the day. They will know which kitchens are cooking well this season, which have changed hands, and which of the Santorini restaurants still has a table free tonight. That is worth more than any list, and it is the part a website genuinely cannot do.

One Last Practical Note

Two details that catch people out at Santorini restaurants and appear on no menu. First, the terraces on the caldera get genuinely cold after dark from late September, and very few of them have anything you can borrow, so take a layer even in a heatwave. Second, the walk back from most rim Santorini restaurants is over uneven stone in poor light, which is worth a thought before choosing footwear for the evening.

Beyond that, eat late, share plates, and treat the best Santorini restaurants on this island as a reason to spend an evening rather than an hour.

The Island Behind the Menu

The produce that makes the good Santorini restaurants worth the trip grows on the ground you can see in this film: no irrigation, volcanic ash, and vines coiled flat against the wind.

Before You Book Anything

Three things carry most of the value on this page. Book the rim tables before you arrive. Ask the price of the fish before it is cooked. And spend more of the week inland than the guidebooks suggest, because that is where the best Santorini restaurants are and it is not close.

If you would rather not manage the driving, the parking and the reservations yourself, that is what we do. We are a licensed local operator, we run our own vehicles and guides, we quote per vehicle rather than per person, and we will happily build a day that ends at a table worth sitting at.