Luxury & Fine D. Restaurants of Lefkada Island

Lefkada is the one Ionian island you can drive to. A causeway and a floating swing bridge cross the narrow canal that separates it from the mainland at Aitoloakarnania, which is why the island fills with Greek visitors in August as well as foreign ones, and why its restaurants are less resort-bound than on islands reached only by ferry. The tables worth planning an evening around are spread right across it: in the old town, in the mountain villages above the west coast, and on the water at Nydri.

What Lefkada cooks

The island's cooking leans on the mountains as much as the sea. Lentils are grown at Eglouvi high on the ridge, the local salami and the hard cheeses are sold in every town shop, and the vineyards inland work with Vertzami, a dark-skinned red grape native to the island that turns up on most wine lists. Fish comes ashore at Vasiliki and Nydri. The west-coast beaches — Porto Katsiki, Egremni, Kathisma — are the reason many people are on Lefkada at all, and several of the best kitchens sit on the ridge above them, which is how a beach day tends to end with a sunset table.

Where to eat

Thymari, Lefkada Town

Thymari occupies a walled garden in the middle of the old town: wooden tables, white chairs, low lighting, a stone courtyard. The kitchen builds around island produce — house-baked breads, local olive oil, octopus carpaccio with fish roe, smoked eel with fava. The wine list runs to both Greek and imported bottles.

Rachi, Exanthia

Rachi sits in the mountain village of Exanthia on the west coast, and its terrace looks straight down the cliffs to the Ionian. It is one of the two or three places on Lefkada people book specifically for the sunset. The menu is traditional and largely garden-driven: vegetables picked the same day, wood-fired dishes, grilled mushrooms, cheese croquettes, pork fillet and other local meats, with a separate vegetarian list.

Amente Restaurant & Cocktail Bar, Drymonas

Amente is built into a green hillside at Drymonas, with wooden tables set around a swimming pool and a terrace open to the west coast. A saxophonist plays as the light goes. The cooking is Greek and wider Mediterranean — grilled octopus, Lefkada salad, strip steak — and the bar side of the operation is taken as seriously as the kitchen.

The Old Plane Tree, Kontarena

The Old Plane Tree — O Gero Platanos — has been running since 1991 in the village of Kontarena, inland between Sivota and Vasiliki. Tables are set out in a courtyard under the huge old plane tree that gives the taverna its name, with vines and flowers around it. The food is Lefkadian home cooking: roast lamb, kleftiko, cutlets, stuffed tomatoes, beef stifado, moussaka, lentil salad from the island's own crop, and local wine by the carafe.

Seaside, Nydri

Seaside is on the beach at Nydri, close enough to the water that you eat to the sound of it. The menu is straightforwardly Greek — moussaka, stewed meat, whatever fish came in that morning, grilled whole — and you can take a table on the sand or on the terrace above it.

Fly Me Sun and Stars Bar Cafe, Exanthia

Fly Me stands on the hillside just along from Rachi at Exanthia, its terrace built out to the lip of the cliff above the sea and the mountains. The name is literal: Exanthia is one of the island's paragliding launch sites, and from the terrace you watch wings drop off the ridge and turn out over the coast, most of them in the last hours of light. It opens through the day for breakfast and lunch as well as dinner; the kitchen mixes traditional dishes with things like tagliata, sliced grilled beef, and the cocktail and wine lists are long.

Nissi, Lefkada Town

Nissi looks onto the main square in Lefkada Town, with a white interior, wooden detailing on the patio and enough noise off the square to feel like the centre of things. The cooking is Mediterranean: grilled octopus, moussaka, squid-ink risotto, ribeye.

Beyond the table

• The Archaeological Museum, housed in the Municipal Cultural Centre in Lefkada Town since 1999, is built largely on the finds Wilhelm Dorpfeld made at Nydri between 1901 and 1913 — Early and Middle Helladic tombs, copper tools and weapons, pottery — dug in the course of his long attempt to prove that Lefkada, not Ithaca, was the home of Odysseus.
• The west coast holds the best-known beaches in the Ionian — Porto Katsiki and Egremni under their cliffs, Kathisma with sunbeds and a road down to it — while the sheltered east coast is where the boats are.
• The summer calendar runs on village festivals, and Lefkada Town has hosted the International Folklore Festival every August since 1962, when it opened with dance groups from Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia.

Eating ashore from a boat

Lefkada's harbours make most of this list reachable from the water. The town marina sits at the north end of the canal, a few minutes' walk from Nissi and Thymari; Nydri and Vasiliki are the two busiest anchorages on the island and Seaside is on the beach at one of them. Nothing here is far — Lefkada is only about 35 kilometres from end to end — so the west-coast places are a short drive over the ridge from any of the east-coast moorings. It is a natural pattern for a charter week, and many charter guests exploring Greece by gulet combine their days at sea with an evening here, coming in off the Meganisi and Ithaca anchorages for a table at Exanthia while the sun goes down behind Kefalonia.