Mykonos Food Tour

A Mykonos food tour walks the lanes of Mykonos Town and the island farms to taste the food of the Cyclades, from the peppery kopanisti cheese and cured louza to island pies, almond sweets, fresh seafood, meze with ouzo, and the wines of the Aegean. This post covers what a Mykonos food tour includes, where tours walk, the cheeses and cured meats, the pies and sweets, the seafood, the drinks and wines, farm visits, bread, herbs and honey, the food history of the islands and the best season. It is one of the food tours in Greece on Greece VIP.

Each section ends with a Mykonos food tour that can be booked online.

What does a Mykonos food tour include?

A Mykonos food tour is an escorted tasting walk through the food of a Cycladic island, from kneaded cheese to omelettes, appetizers and desserts. Greek cuisine counts Cycladic cooking as a regional style, and Mykonos adds its own list of local specialities.

Food on Mykonos follows the land. The island is composed mainly of granite, and its terrain is very rocky, with areas eroded by strong winds. In ancient times Mykonos was a poor island with limited agricultural resources. The wider Cyclades share that trait: the soil is not very fertile, except on Naxos, and farms yield olive oil, wheat, wine, fruit and tobacco. A Mykonos food tour crosses an island with no rivers, only seasonal streams.

Greek cuisine ties its dishes to climate and terrain. The climate and terrain favoured goats and sheep over cattle, so beef dishes are uncommon, while fish dishes are common in coastal regions and on the islands. Greek cooks use a great variety of cheese types. The Aegean islands, with the Cycladic style called Kykladitiki, appear among the regional cuisines of the country. A Mykonos food tour therefore tastes the cheese of the island beside its desserts and omelettes.

The island list of local specialities names nine items, led by a cheese and including an omelette, an appetizer and four desserts. The list for the whole Cyclades adds a soup, a pasta, omelettes and a wine from Santorini. A Mykonos island tour covers the windmills, the museums and the monastery of Ano Mera, whereas a Mykonos food tour stays at the table and follows that list of specialities.

• Cheese: The Cyclades list names six cheeses, and Kopanisti Mykonou is the first of them.
• Desserts: Four items on the Mykonos list carry the label dessert, and two of them also appear on the Cyclades list.
• Appetizer: One item on the Mykonos list, ksinotira, carries the label appetizer.

A Mykonos food tour rests on three facts: a rocky island with little farmland, a Greek regional style that covers the Aegean islands, and a local list that puts cheese first. The Cyclades list carries the same cheese, together with cheeses from other islands, so the table of Mykonos sits inside a wider Cycladic table.

Where does a Mykonos food tour walk?

A Mykonos food tour walks through Chora, the main town on the west coast, past its lanes, harbour and Little Venice, then reaches Ano Mera, the inland village seven kilometres away. Chora means town in Greek, a name that the island shares with its main town.

In the lanes of Chora, the Tria Pigadia, three identical wells, line up at the centre of the town. They date from 1722 and were built to supply the town with water. They reach only 5 to 6 metres down, because the diggers cut into sand, where water was easier to reach, whereas modern wells run deeper than 30 metres. A Mykonos food tour continues to the Folklore Museum, which occupies the oldest house of the island.

The old port and Little Venice give the walk its waterfront. Delos lies only 2 km away, housed a large population and was where the Delian League met, so the harbour of Mykonos became a supply and transit point. Along the shore, rows of fishing houses carry balconies over the sea. Rich merchants and captains owned them, and the first rose in the mid-18th century. A Mykonos food tour on this front meets bars, cafes, galleries and shops in converted houses.

Ano Mera stands inland, seven kilometres from Mykonos Town, and counts among the ten villages of the island. The monastery of Panagia Tourliani, the principal monastery of Mykonos, is named after the island’s patron saint. Every first Sunday of Lent a litany carries the icon to Chora, to one of three parish churches, and it stays there until the Saturday of Lazarus. A Mykonos food tour in Ano Mera meets a village built around a monastery.

• Kato Mili: The name means lower mills, and the windmills line one hill above the sea.
• Camel Rock: This rock formation off the coast near the windmills resembles a camel sitting in shallow water.
• Parish churches: Chora has three, named Megali Panagia, Panachrantos and Saint Kyriaki.

Chora, its harbour and Little Venice stand on the west coast, and Ano Mera lies inland, so a Mykonos food tour joins a sea-facing town with a monastery village. The island spans 85.5 square kilometres, and regular buses from a depot above the old port link Chora with Ano Mera, Elia and Kalafatis.

Why does a Mykonos food tour taste kopanisti?

A Mykonos food tour tastes kopanisti because the salty, spicy cheese has been made on Mykonos for more than 300 years and holds protected designation of origin. Abundant microbial growth, encouraged by repeated kneading, gives it a peppery taste.

Kopanisti comes from the Cyclades, where Mykonos, Tinos, Andros, Syros and Naxos all produce it. Its peppery, spicy taste results from rapid and extensive lipolysis and proteolysis. Abundant microbial growth drives both processes, and the repeated kneadings of the ripening stage encourage that growth. In Turkey the cheese is known as kopanisti peyniri or acı peynir, meaning bitter cheese, and is traditionally made from goat’s milk in İzmir Province. A Mykonos food tour tastes the Greek version.

Makers rely on artisanal cultures, which carry over earlier batches of cheese as inoculum for new ones. The milk is cooked with yeast at 28 to 30 °C until it thickens. Salt and red chili peppers go in, and the maker works the mixture by hand as it cures. A Mykonos food tour tastes cheese that rests in cloth under a stone for a week, then ages in containers for one to two months.

Protected designation of origin is a type of geographical indication of the European Union. It preserves the designations of origin of food-related products, and it applies to products produced, processed and developed in one geographical area, using the recognised know-how of local producers and ingredients from the region. The characteristics of a protected product link to its terroir. Kopanisti belongs to this group, so a Mykonos food tour tastes a cheese tied to its place.

• Created: The designation dates from 1992, so a Mykonos food tour tastes a protected cheese.
• Logo: The European logo is compulsory and documents the link between product and terroir.
• Register: The eAmbrosia database lists protected wines, spirits and food in the European Union.

Kopanisti combines four facts: a Cycladic origin shared by Mykonos, Tinos, Andros, Syros and Naxos, a Mykonos tradition of more than 300 years, a method built on hourly hand work, and a European protected designation. Cooks serve it on dry bread with chopped tomatoes and olive oil, and Mykoniotes also set it out as a meze beside ouzo, two ways that a Mykonos food tour tastes it.

Which cured meats does a Mykonos food tour serve?

A Mykonos food tour serves louza, the preserved pork loin of the northern Cyclades, and sets it among the cured pork of the Mediterranean. Cyprus, Spain, Italy and Corsica each cure a pork loin of their own, so louza is the island form of a wider family.

The list of Mykonos specialities calls louza similar to the Cypriot lountza. Cypriot makers brine the pork tenderloin and marinate it in red wine, then dry it and smoke it. The meat reaches the market straight after smoking or after ageing, and ageing makes it harder and stronger in flavor. A Mykonos food tour that serves louza serves the Cycladic counterpart of that meat.

Spanish lomo embuchado is dry-cured pork tenderloin, sometimes called caña de lomo or just lomo. It is similar to cecina, but it uses pork instead of beef. Italian capocollo is very similar but comes from the neck muscle and frequently goes into a casing. Corsican lonzu is cured loin. A Mykonos food tour therefore serves one regional name for a cut that appears in the cuisines of Mediterranean Europe and South America.

Curing can be traced back to antiquity, and salt pulls moisture out of the food by osmosis. Curing stayed the primary method of preserving meat and fish until the late 19th century. Charcuterie, the branch of French cuisine for prepared meat products, began as a way to preserve meat before refrigeration. Today cooks prepare cured meats for the flavors that preservation creates, so a Mykonos food tour tastes the result of the cure.

• Louza: Mykonos, Syros, Andros and Tinos make louza from pork loin.
• Loukaniko: Loukaniko is a Greek sausage of pork or lamb flavored with orange peel and fennel seed.
• Charcuterie: The French word joins chair, flesh, and cuit, cooked.
• Sweet spices: Cinnamon, allspice and cloves season Greek stews.

Before the mass production of pigs in the 20th century, pork in Europe was an autumn dish, because pigs fattened over the summer and went to slaughter in the autumn. Curing makes meat inhospitable to the microbes that cause spoilage. The cured pork of a Mykonos food tour rests on that principle, and a Mykonos food tour that serves louza serves a meat made by salt, time and sometimes smoke.

Which pies does a Mykonos food tour try?

A Mykonos food tour tries Greek pies, among them kremmydopita, an onion pie that appears on the list of Mykonos specialities. Greek pies wrap their fillings in filo, a pastry of flour, water and a little oil that bakers stretch into paper-thin sheets.

Pita is the Greek word for pie, and spanakopita joins it to spanaki, the word for spinach. Greek kitchens wrap food in filo as bite-size triangles or as large sheets. The range runs from kotopita, a chicken pie, to kimadopita, a ground meat pie, and tsouknidopita, a nettle pie. Greek cuisine counts countless variations of pitas, and a Mykonos food tour tastes the island’s variations.

Kremmydopita holds a place among the Mykonos specialities. The cuisine list of Kastoria, a city in northern Greece, translates the name as onion pie, so the pie is known beyond the islands. Greek cooking leans on onion, garlic, dill and mint more than other Mediterranean cooking does. A Mykonos food tour that tries kremmydopita tastes a pie named for its onion.

Homemade filo takes time and skill. The cook rolls and stretches the dough in steps until it forms a single thin, very large sheet. A very big table helps, preferably one with a marble top, and flour goes between the layers so that the sheets do not stick together. The long, thin rolling pin has a Turkish name, oklava. Pastry chefs in the Ottoman Empire developed the paper-thin form of modern filo by the 15th century. A Mykonos food tour tastes pies that depend on that dough.

• Tiropita: Tiropita layers buttered phyllo around a cheese-egg mixture.
• Kasseropita: Kasseropita is the name of a tiropita made with kasseri cheese.
• Hortopita: Hortopita is a pie filled with wild or cultivated greens.
• Pitarakia: Pitarakia are mini half-moon mizithra pies from the island of Milos.

Cato the Elder recorded a layered cheese and honey dish called placenta in 160 BC, and certain scholars name it an ancestor of tiropita. Spanakopita also has a fasting form for Lent and other religious fasts, with spinach, onions, herbs, olive oil and a little wheat flour but no eggs or dairy products. A Mykonos food tour that tries pies meets a dish with ancient roots and a Lenten version.

Which sweets does a Mykonos food tour taste?

A Mykonos food tour tastes amygdalota, the almond cookies tied to the Cyclades, and melopita, a honey pie from the list of Mykonos sweets. Almond forms the base of the cookies, and honey gives the pie its name in Greek.

The Greek name amygdalota translates as almond pears. In certain regions the cookies carry the names rozethes, ergolavoi and troufes. Cooks shape them as pears, balls or other forms. Syros, another island of the Cyclades, has its own version, amygdalota axladakia. Similar almond cookies appear throughout the cuisines of the eastern Mediterranean. A Mykonos food tour therefore tastes one local member of a regional family.

The almond belongs to the genus Prunus, and its fruit is a drupe, not a true nut. The edible seed sits inside a woody shell, which sits inside a leathery hull. The tree prospers in a Mediterranean climate with warm, dry summers and mild, wet winters. Almonds were among the earliest domesticated fruit trees. The English word almond descends from Classical Latin amygdala, which borrowed the Ancient Greek amygdalē. A Mykonos food tour tastes the almond that the Ancient Greeks called amygdalē.

Marzipan consists mainly of sugar and almond meal, and variants use other nuts or apricot or peach kernels instead of almonds. In Greece and Cyprus cooks make it in a range of shapes and sizes and almost always leave it white. On the islands of the Aegean in particular, white marzipan is a wedding treat served to guests at wedding feasts. The almond sweets of a Mykonos food tour belong to the same Aegean tradition.

• Soumada: Soumada is a syrupy, non-alcoholic drink of almonds from the island of Crete.
• Amygdalopita: Amygdalopita is a cake of ground almonds, flour, butter, eggs and pastry cream.
• Mandola: Mandola is an almond candy from the island of Corfu.
• Koliva: Koliva mixes boiled wheat with honey, sesame seeds, walnuts, raisins, anise and almonds.

Melopita is a honey cheesecake that Greek cuisine ties to Sifnos, an island of the Cyclades. The list of Mykonos specialities names it as a dessert, so a Mykonos food tour that tastes melopita tastes a honey pie of the Cyclades. The almond cookies and the honey pie rest on two ingredients, and Greek cuisine lists nuts and honey among the common dessert ingredients.

Which seafood does a Mykonos food tour serve?

A Mykonos food tour serves the seafood of the Aegean Sea: grilled octopus, cuttlefish, shrimps, lobster and sea urchin. The plates run from fish soup and seafood pasta to raw urchin roe, so one tasting covers the grill, the pot and the raw plate.

The fishing tradition of the Cyclades reaches back before 4000 BCE. A Neolithic culture of the western Aegean lived on emmer, wild-type barley, sheep, goats, pigs and tuna that were apparently speared from small boats. Byzantine cuisine added caviar, nutmeg and basil to the older diet, and fish stayed integral to the diet of coastal dwellers. A Mykonos food tour tastes the latest chapter of that sea diet, set on an island in the same archipelago.

Octopus reaches a Mykonos food tour in more than one form. Cooks grill it as htapodi sti schara, and stifado, a casserole of baby onions, tomatoes, wine or vinegar, olive oil, bay leaf and black pepper, lists octopus beside pork, goat, rabbit and snails. Cooked octopus holds about 56 kilocalories per 100 grams, with vitamin B3, vitamin B12, potassium, phosphorus and selenium. In Turkey, fish restaurants rank octopus salad as a popular cold meze, beside eggplant.

Sea urchin is eaten for its gonads alone, the only meaty, edible parts of the animal, which menus call roe or corals. In Mediterranean cuisines the species Paracentrotus lividus is eaten raw or with lemon, and Italian menus name it ricci and use it in pasta sauces. It also flavours omelettes, scrambled eggs, fish soup, mayonnaise and hollandaise sauce. A Mykonos food tour tastes sea urchin in the Mediterranean way, raw or with lemon.

• Fish soup: Kakavia combines fish, onions, potatoes, olive oil and vegetables, and psarosoupa is the Greek name for fish soup.
• Lobster pasta: Astakomakaronada serves lobster meat in a tomato-based sauce over pasta.
• Shrimp pasta: Garidomakaronada pairs shrimps with spaghetti.
• Cuttlefish: Soupies is the Greek word for cuttlefish.

A Mykonos food tour serves sea urchin in a Mediterranean tradition that has its own festival, called oursinade, in the region of Marseille. Elsewhere the appetite is far larger. Japan consumes 50,000 tons of sea urchin a year, over 80% of global production, and its demand has raised concerns about overfishing.

Which drinks does a Mykonos food tour pour with meze?

A Mykonos food tour pours ouzo and tsipouro with meze, the small hot or cold dishes of Greece. Ouzo is a dry anise aperitif made from rectified spirit, tsipouro is an un-aged grape brandy, and both arrive in small glasses beside shared plates.

Ouzo, poured on a Mykonos food tour, has two accounts of its name. One traces it to the Italian phrase uso Marsiglia, stamped on silkworm cocoons that Tyrnavos exported in the 19th century, and the other follows the major Greek dictionaries in deriving it from the Turkish üzüm, meaning grape. Makers call the flavoured spirit ouzo yeast, a metaphor for the starting point of the drink. They distil it again, remove the heads and tails, and redistil those cuts into a different quality of ouzo.

Not every ouzo is made the same way. Makers of the high-quality kind dilute the pure distillate with water alone, while other producers blend the yeast with cheaper ethyl alcohol flavoured with 0.05 percent natural anethole, and Greek law fixes the yeast at no less than 20 percent of that blend. A Mykonos food tour pours a spirit that was once called a substitute for absinthe without the wormwood.

Tsipouro, also poured on a Mykonos food tour, starts with ripe dark grapes passed through crusher-destemmers, and the mass settles just long enough for fermentation to start. Formerly makers drew off the wine and distilled only the solid residue, but producers now use the whole pulp for a superior grade called apostagma. The distillate matures in stainless steel tanks. Aged versions rest in wooden barrels and compare to whiskey. Greek drinkers pour tsipouro at social gatherings, like all alcoholic beverages in Greece.

• Naql: Medieval Arabic texts describe naql, small dishes such as salted toasted almonds that were served with alcohol.
• Turkey: Meze tables hold fried calamari, stuffed or fried mussels and artichokes beside rakı.
• Levant: Dishes arrive four or five at a time, from olives, tahini, salad and yogurt to whole fish and meat stews.

Ouzo has relatives across the Mediterranean: sambuca in Italy, pastis in France, rakı in Turkey and arak in the Levant. In Cyprus it also forms the base of a cocktail called Ouzini. Abroad, restaurants serve it deeply chilled in a shot glass, cold enough for crystals to form. A Mykonos food tour that pours ouzo with meze places the island table within that wider anise family.

Which wines does a Mykonos food tour taste?

A Mykonos food tour tastes the wines of the Cyclades, led by the white grape Assyrtiko and the island variety Monemvasia. Assyrtiko keeps its acidity as it ripens, while Monemvasia is a Greek variety named after a port and grown primarily in the Cyclades.

Wine belongs to the farm produce of the Cyclades, together with fruit, wheat, olive oil and tobacco. With the exception of Naxos, the soil of the islands is not very fertile. A Santorini food tour pours Assyrtiko, a grape indigenous to Santorini, grown in volcanic-ash soil on one of the only two volcanic islands of the group, while a Mykonos food tour stands on an island composed mostly of granite.

Assyrtiko is a multi-purpose variety, mostly island-based, that maintains its acidity as it ripens. Wine writers describe a savoury profile, stony minerality and citrus freshness. Its mineral profile suits blending, and it has been blended with Sauvignon blanc, Sémillon and Malagousia. A comparative study on Santorini found that basket-shaped kouloura training kept vine water status less stressed than VSP training and gave better protection in heatwaves and strong winds. A Mykonos food tour pours Assyrtiko as the white anchor of the Cycladic list.

Malvasia takes its name from the Italian form of Monemvasia, a port town in southern Greece, though the wine was not grown locally. The Peloponnese and the Cyclades islands, above all Tinos beside Mykonos, supplied it. Malvasia bianca grows on the Greek islands of Paros and Syros, two more neighbours of Mykonos. Tinos, Syros and Paros therefore tie the history of Malvasia to the neighbourhood of a Mykonos food tour.

• Retsina: In retsina, Assyrtiko is blended with the less acidic Savatiano grape.
• Names: Assyrtiko also appears as Asyrtiko, Assyrtico and Assirtico.
• Styles: Malvasia grapes make white and rarely red table wines, dessert wines and fortified wines.

DNA analysis suggests that Athiri, a variety planted widely across Greece, is ancestral to Malvasia. Athiri is one of the oldest varieties and originates on Santorini, Mavrotragano also comes from the Cyclades, and Greece holds about 200 vine varieties in all. A Mykonos food tour therefore tastes a Cycladic glass with a long line behind it.

Can a Mykonos food tour visit a farm?

A Mykonos food tour can include a farm stop that shows how a rocky island feeds itself, from dry-stone walls and small fields to livestock and cheese making. The stop links each dish on the table to the land, the animals and the work behind it.

Stone shapes the land that a Mykonos food tour farm stop shows. One theory traces the name Mykonos to the ancient Greek word Mykon, which roughly translates to a pile of stones or a rocky place. Older dry-stone walls were built from the stones and boulders that farmers cleared from fields before planting. Terraced fields cut erosion and surface runoff, and dry-stone retaining walls were once built in great numbers to hold the soil on each terrace.

A dry-stone wall uses no mortar, and carefully chosen stones interlock to hold one another in place. In a double wall, two vertical layers follow the boundary, large tie-stones span both faces to bind them, and smaller stones pack the gap between the layers. Capstones close the top. The art of dry stone walling was inscribed in 2018 on the UNESCO list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, and Greece is one of the countries named in that entry.

Livestock gives a farm its dairy. Greek cuisine records that the climate and terrain favour the breeding of goats and sheep over cattle. Ancient cheesemakers preferred goat’s milk, because goats are smaller animals that need less food and are easier to transport and herd. Goats can breed at any time of year, while sheep mate only in fall and winter. Cheese appears in ancient Greek literature, so the dairy on a Mykonos food tour has a long written record.

• Rennet: Rennet makes the casein in the milk form curd.
• Moulds: Moulds of wood or pottery hold the curd while the whey drains out.
• Whey: The more whey drains away, the firmer the cheese becomes.

A farm stop gives a Mykonos food tour its first link in the food chain. The stone walls hold the soil, the livestock supply the milk, and the cheese vat turns milk into a food that stores its value in concentrated form. Each later tasting then has a source on the land, so a traveller checks the stop list when choosing a Mykonos food tour.

Which bread does a Mykonos food tour taste?

A Mykonos food tour tastes traditional bread from wood-fired ovens and paximadi, the hard barley rusk of Greek farmers. The windmills of Chora once milled flour, so the bread on the table links back to the mills on the hill.

Paximadi on a Mykonos food tour is a hard bread of Greek origin, similar to rusk, and cooks prepare it with whole wheat, chick pea or barley flour. Greek farmers ate it in the fields after soaking it in water and olive oil, and thrifty priests and the Byzantine military ate it too. Bakers sliced it thickly into wedges and put it back in the oven to dry, and the drying preserved it.

Contemporary bakers bake paximadi overnight in ovens that have been turned off, and the remaining heat cooks the bread to a dry state. The method gives a dry rusk without the brittleness that makes it crumble. Cooks also dampen paximadi and break it into pieces for salads. Two varieties show the range: koulouri, a ring-shaped rusk from Crete that is served dry and drizzled with olive oil, and a rusk made with chick peas.

A masonry oven has a baking chamber of fireproof brick, concrete, stone, clay or cob, and tradition fires it with wood. The oven works by soaking up heat, like a battery building up a charge, and its heavy walls release the heat slowly. Bread bakes in radiant heat from the walls, heat from the hot floor and moving hot air, and the oven seals in steam, which gives a more flavourful and chewy crust.

• Mills: Capped with wood and straw, the windmills that a Mykonos food tour passes worked until the early 20th century.
• Sails: A miller sets the sailcloth to the wind and must stop the mill to adjust it.
• Barley: Barley tolerates drought and grows best in well-drained soil.

The bread course of a Mykonos food tour joins three trades. A farmer grows the grain, a miller turns it into flour, and a baker fires the oven. Paximadi adds a fourth step, a second drying that lets the bread keep. Each step is old, and a Mykonos food tour that tastes both loaf and rusk tastes the whole chain.

Which herbs and island products does a Mykonos food tour use?

A Mykonos food tour uses thyme honey, wild herbs such as oregano, thyme and savory, and capers, the pickled flower buds of a caper bush. Sun and well-drained soil suit these plants, and each one flavours the dishes and sweets of Cycladic cooking.

Thyme honey on a Mykonos food tour is a monofloral honey, made primarily from the nectar of one kind of flower. Beekeepers keep hives where the bees reach only that flower, as far as possible. Wild thyme covers large areas of droughty, rocky soil in southern Europe, and Greece is especially famous for wild thyme honey. Hymettus, the mountain range near Athens, was noted for its thyme honey.

A Mykonos food tour flavours dishes with oregano, a woody perennial of the mint family, and the subspecies hirtum, called Greek oregano, comes from Greece, the Balkans, Turkey and Cyprus. Dried leaves can be more intense than fresh, and in Greece dried oregano flavours Greek salad and the lemon and olive oil sauce for grilled fish and meat. Thyme is slightly spicier than oregano and sweeter than sage. It tolerates drought well, and the ancient Greeks burnt it as incense in temples, believing it a source of courage.

The caper bush behind a Mykonos food tour is a perennial with thick, shiny leaves and large white to pinkish-white flowers that carry long violet stamens. Its edible flower buds, the capers, serve as a seasoning or garnish, and its fruit, the caper berry, is eaten salted or pickled. The plant grows in Greece and the Greek Islands, and it reduces erosion on steep, rocky slopes. The English word caper traces back to the Greek kapparis.

• Savory: Summer savory is an annual that cooks prefer, and winter savory is an evergreen perennial.
• Honey: Filling one honey stomach takes visits to more than one thousand flowers.
• Thorns: Caper bushes normally have curved thorns that can scratch the people who pick the buds.

Mykonos has a hot semi-arid climate with low rainfall. Thyme tolerates drought, oregano prefers a hot and relatively dry climate, and the caper bush grows in semiarid to arid country. The herbs and capers of a Mykonos food tour therefore grow in conditions that the island supplies, and thyme honey carries the flavour of the thyme flower into the sweets of the table.

What food history does a Mykonos food tour tell?

A Mykonos food tour tells the food history of the Cyclades: dry farming on rocky islands, sailors and traders who brought supplies, Venetian and Ottoman rulers, and a tourism trade that came to dominate the local economy in the 20th century.

The food of the Cyclades begins before 4000 BCE with emmer, wild-type barley, sheep, goats, pigs and tuna that people apparently speared from small boats. The climate is dry and mild, and the soil is not very fertile, with Naxos as the exception. Farm produce includes wine, fruit, wheat and olive oil. Mykonos has no rivers, so a Mykonos food tour tastes dry farming on rock.

The sea supplied what the land lacked. Delos, the meeting ground of the Delian League, stood only 2 km away and held a large population, which made Mykonos an important place for supplies and transit. Until the end of the 18th century the island prospered as a trading center, took in immigrants from nearby islands and suffered regular pirate raids. Fish stayed integral to the coastal diet.

Rulers changed the island in turn. Direct Venetian rule began in 1390. An Ottoman fleet settled on the island in 1537, and Ottoman rule lasted until 1830. Greek cuisine as a whole continues Ancient Greek and Byzantine traditions while taking in Middle Eastern, Balkan and Italian influences. Dishes such as kadaifi and halva are inherited from Ottoman cuisine, and the first Greek cookbook appeared in 1828.

Tourism rewrote the economy in the 20th century. The economy declined in the late 19th century, and especially after the Corinth Canal opened in 1904 and the First World War began, so Mykonians left for mainland Greece and abroad, above all the United States. French excavations on Delos began in 1873, tourism soon dominated the island, and jet-set visitors arrived in the 1960s. Erosion, pollution and water shortages followed across the Cyclades.

• Triad: Ancient Greek cooking was frugal and rested on wheat, olive oil and wine.
• Livestock: Climate and terrain favor goats and sheep over cattle, so beef dishes are uncommon.
• Syros: The first Greek cookbook was printed on the Cycladic island of Syros.

The ancient spread of grapes and olive trees around the Mediterranean is connected with Greek colonization. Byzantine cooks added caviar, nutmeg and basil, and lemons, introduced in the second century, moved from medicine into the diet. Constantinople was a global hub of the spice trade. A Mykonos food tour places the island plate at the end of that long line.

When is the best season for a Mykonos food tour?

A Mykonos food tour runs on a calendar set by rain and wind: rain from October to March, the meltemi wind from late spring to mid-September, and vegetation that grows from mid-autumn to early summer. Spring and autumn flank the summer peak.

The National Observatory of Athens classes Mykonos as a hot semi-arid climate, although the island shares the traits of a Mediterranean climate and the Aegean Sea shapes it. Rain is low because the Pindus mountain range dries the westerly winds, and the rainy season lasts from October until March. Vegetation grows from around mid-autumn and ends at the beginning of summer. A spring Mykonos food tour therefore falls inside the growing season.

The meltemi is a dry north wind that blows from late spring to mid-September. It is strongest in the afternoon, and a spell can run for days without a break, although the wind can also die down at night. The weather under it is ordinarily fine and clear. The island’s nickname, the Island of the Winds, comes from its very strong winds.

Summer is the peak of the tourist year. Highs average 27 °C and nights stay above 24 °C, yet the seasonal wind and the sea keep summer days relatively cool, dry and sunny. Mykonos is the second top summer destination in Greece, and the island can host about 50,000 visitors per night. A summer Mykonos food tour therefore meets the peak crowds.

• Winter: Highs average around 15 °C and nights around 11 °C, with mild, wet weather.
• Hardiness: Coastal Mykonos falls in hardiness zone 10b/11a.
• Direction: Etesians blow from the north in the central Aegean and from the northwest in the southern Aegean.

The wind also sets the travel calendar. At force 7 to 8 on the Beaufort scale, the meltemi can keep inter-island ferries in port, and it comes up in clear weather without warning. Leisure sailors favor the same wind for its steady strength. A summer Mykonos food tour that follows a ferry crossing depends on the sea as well as the date.

What do travelers ask about a Mykonos food tour?

A Mykonos food tour draws six questions: vegetarian dishes, children, alcohol, portion size, arrival by ferry or plane, and sightseeing. Greek cooking offers vegetable dishes, meze can form a whole meal, and Chora, the airport and Delos all lie within reach.

Does a Mykonos food tour suit vegetarians?

Vegetable cooking has a long place in Greek food. Typical home meals include seasonal vegetables stewed with olive oil, herbs and tomato sauce, known as lathera. Filo pies hold spinach and cheese, greens or zucchini, and Greek cuisine also uses cheeses, olives and yogurt.

Can children join a Mykonos food tour?

Plain foods fill the Greek table. Wheat bread is ubiquitous, and a Greek breakfast adds sesame bread rings, strained yogurt, honey and fresh fruit. Loukoumades are fried dough balls spiced with cinnamon and drizzled with honey, and none of these foods holds alcohol.

Do the drinks on a Mykonos food tour include alcohol?

Wine is one of the three pillars of Greek cooking, and farm produce of the Cyclades includes wine. Meze are served with spirits such as ouzo. Alcohol-free drinks also belong to the Greek table: frappé coffee, mountain tea, hot milk and fruit juice all appear at a Greek breakfast.

How much food does a Mykonos food tour serve?

A meze is a selection of small dishes, and it can be one part of a multi-course meal or form a meal in itself. Meze cover cubes of cheese, olives, grilled meats, dips, salads and seafood. Food tourism includes food and drink tours, farm visits and trips to markets and producers.

How do travelers reach a Mykonos food tour?

Mykonos Airport lies 4 km southeast of the main town and receives international flights during summer. High-speed vessels call daily from Athens and the surrounding islands. Chora, the main town, stands on the west coast, and taxis, buses and boats link it to the rest of the island.

Can a Mykonos food tour combine with sightseeing?

Delos lies only 2 km from Mykonos, belongs to the municipality of Mykonos, and tour boats cross to it regularly. Delos has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1990. Chora holds the Kato Mili windmills, the Tria Pigadia wells and the Municipal Library, so a Mykonos food tour in the town sits beside the sights.

Featured photo: Mustang Joe, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.