Where and what to eat in Lipsi

Although little known to the traveling crowds, Lipsi has its own fanatical audience, mainly from the Italy, but also from the UK, Spain and the Scandinavian countries, and enjoys high rates of traffic and occupancy throughout the summer season. In the seaside restaurants and taverns of Lipsi you will find fresh fish directly from the boats, and local wine that sweetens the nights and makes them last forever.

At the restaurant “Calypso” at the port, Pepo the chef, has been cooking risotto and pasta with seafood, spaghetti with ragout from fresh fish (varying the classic recipe with minced meat) and squid al vapore (i.e. steamed) with orange and cinnamon.

Of course, the shop, which is a family business and the owner’s mother, Mrs. Alexandra, is also in the kitchen, also serves nice Greek stews, such as stuffed goat and rabbit stew.

Hub for the gourmet fans is the “Dilaila“. Here on the beautiful beach of Katsadia, where a lot of small and big boats are moored off it, the owner and cook Christodoulos is getting better year by year. The once slightly hippy beach bar is now recommended as a restaurant and Christodoulos and his team serve one of the most delicious appetizers of the Aegean, the unlikely “grass fish” as they call it. What is; Fresh tuna sauteed with organic vegetables from their garden and citrus dressing.

He also makes carpaccio of squid and octopus of Lepsotian origin, while an excellent option for fish eaters is the medium-roasted tuna accompanied by crispy “double potatoes” (potatoes that are first boiled and then fried). You will enjoy the double potatoes as a side dish to “Dilaila’s” meats, to the hearty beef steak, but also to the brisket, which is either grilled or fried (the second version is better) and served with wine sauce or pesto.

For those of you who love fresh fruit in salads, Christodoulos dares a special watermelon salad and an also special and very cool orange salad. We tried the second one with freshly cut orange, feta cheese, olive and onion and we enjoyed it. As for dessert, Christodoulos is known to everyone for its banoffee!

On the appropriate beach of the island, which also has a tavern, at Platy Gyalos with its turquoise waters, Lefteris, who has studied at a culinary school, fries beautiful pumpkin meatballs and serves them with a light tzatziki in the middle, he makes a delicious tuna salad, which every year it looks better and better, and as for the rest…

Here it’s worth ordering either the fish of the day – from thin pan-fried white bate to large sea bream – or chicken from their own ones, well-raised and masterfully baked. Basically, if you want grilled chicken in Lipsi, you are in the right place. On Sundays you will meet almost the whole island here, the locals who come to bathe and eat.

On summer evenings, all the traffic gathers at the port, where apart from “Calypso”, there are other dining options. One favorite is “Pefko” with the red checkered tablecloths on the tables and the always good mood of the owner Nikos. Here, the menu is more… urban. Three dishes worth trying are the eggplant rolls with cheese and tomato sauce, the “kleftiko”, which is beef with cheese inside a crust, baked in a clay pot, and the penne “Pefko”, in his own secret recipe that deciphering it, we find the cream and the bacon, and we wonder if the special taste of the sauce is given by the balsamic or the Lepsiot wine. The swordfish skewer was also excellent.

Continuing the walk and passing the ouzeries, have a final stop at “Aspraki”, sit on the rag stalls in front of the marina, listen to old rebetika or whatever makes you happy and enjoy grilled octopus, fried cuttlefish, octopus meatballs or cod meatballs with garlic, their own aubergine salad and beetroot.

Here the menu is never fixed, as it depends on the fish of the day and the ingredients available to the cook. In any case, Sivos the chef is there and will inform you of the options you have to accompany your ouzo, which is a must, or your tsipouro and beer.