Mykonos has the clubs and Santorini has the sunset, but food people come to Tinos. Over the last decade the island has become one of the Cyclades' serious gastronomy destinations, with its own cured meats, rare cheeses, wild greens and a kitchen-garden tradition that still feeds the village tables. If you are wondering what to eat in Tinos, start here.
Louza, the island's cured pork
The thing to try first is louza: a lean pork fillet rubbed with red wine, salt, pepper and island spices, wrapped and air-dried for weeks until it slices almost translucent. It is the Cycladic answer to prosciutto — served in wafer-thin sheets with a hard cheese and a glass of wine. The Venetians also left behind a garlicky cured sausage the locals call salsisi; ask for it by name.
Cheese ripened in a gourd
Tinos makes one of Greece's strangest and best cheeses: kariki, a blue-veined cheese matured for months inside a hollowed-out, sealed gourd. It tastes like a mellow roquefort with the bite of something far older. Alongside it you will find petroma, a fresh soft cheese, and its aged cousins — the little kalathaki and volaki — crumbly, milky and made for the breakfast table. Save room for the sweets, too: the island bakeries lean on almonds, sesame and thyme honey, so look for pasteli and soft almond pastes.
Komi artichokes and the kitchen garden
Tinos is famous for its produce. The village of Komi grows small, tender artichokes that are celebrated every year with an Artichoke Festival in the village square, usually in the first days of June when the harvest decides the date. Look too for wild capers and caper leaves, sun-dried tomatoes, horta (wild greens) and thyme honey from the island's hillsides — the same hillsides our villages sit on.
Raki, the local firewater
Dinner ends with raki, the clear grape spirit that much of the Cyclades calls souma. Falatados, just up the road from us, still keeps working winepresses and distilleries and celebrates the distilling each September. A small glass, served cold, is how a Tinos meal says goodnight.
Come hungry: the food festivals
Time your trip around the table. Tinos Food Paths, the island's gastronomy festival running since 2015, fills the second week of May with beach barbecues, wine classes outside monasteries and feasts in the village squares. The Komi Artichoke Festival follows in early June, and Falatados toasts the new raki in September. Spring and early autumn are when the island eats best.
Where we send our guests
We keep our taverna picks in the "Our Tinos" section on our homepage — from the plane-tree square two minutes from Emerald View House, to the beloved village kitchen in Triantaros, to the famous seaside table at Ysternia bay. Tell us when you are coming and we will point you to whatever was cooked that morning.
A village kitchen of your own
Half the pleasure of Tinos is cooking what you buy: a bag of Komi artichokes, a wedge of kariki, tomatoes still warm from the market. Our four houses in Dyo Choria and Triantaros are hand-renovated traditional Cycladic architecture — stone, marble and wood — with proper kitchens and terraces made for long dinners above the Aegean. They make an easy base for eating your way around the island. See the houses below and message us through the contact section for dates and our best direct rate.
