Luxury & Fine D. Restaurants of Santorini Island

Santorini's restaurants are positioned, and largely priced, by view. The ones on the caldera rim at Oia, Fira and Firostefani charge for the drop below them; the ones inland compete on the food instead. The six places below cover that range, from a hotel dining room in Oia that began as the village's first taverna to a kitchen that gave up its caldera address altogether and moved to a hill village.

Lauda, Oia

Lauda was built in 1971 as the first restaurant in Oia, when the village had a few hundred residents and the restaurant held its only telephone. It now belongs to the Andronis Boutique Hotel, on the cliff at the northern end of the caldera, with two terrace levels facing west into the sunset.

The cooking is Greek with a wider Mediterranean reach, and the menu has been reworked by consulting chefs since 2017. Starters lean on yellowtail, caviar and octopus; main courses run through fish, lobster, lamb, beef and chicken. There is a long list of spirits and cocktails, and live music from the patio on some evenings.

Catch, Oia

Catch sits just behind Oia's main square, a few steps off the route most visitors walk, which keeps it quieter than the cliff-front terraces without giving up the setting. Its main space is a garden courtyard that doubles as a bar.

The menu is built around seafood and slow-cooked meats, with salads alongside, and a wine list covering Greek and imported bottles as well as a cocktail card.

Selene, Pyrgos

Selene opened in Fira in 1986 under Yiorgos and Evelyn Hatziyannakis, and in 2010 it left the caldera entirely, moving inland to a restored nineteenth-century mansion in Pyrgos, the village built around a medieval castle. Giving up a sunset terrace was deliberate: the restaurant's argument has always been Santorini's own produce rather than its view, and Pyrgos sits among the vineyards. It is one of the highest villages on the island, so the terrace looks out over the island and its fields instead of the crater.

Octopus, rabbit and quail appear on the menu, along with brodetto, a fish stew. The wine list concentrates on Greek producers. Since 2021 the kitchen has been led by Ettore Botrini.

1500 BC, Fira

The name refers to the eruption that emptied the volcano's magma chamber and left the caldera behind. That event was long dated to around 1500 BC, which is where the restaurant took its name; radiocarbon work has since pushed the likely date closer to 1600 BC.

The restaurant occupies a two-storey Cycladic house at the end of Fira's main strip, on the cliff roughly 250 metres above the water, with a terrace facing the sunset. Seafood is the point, brought in by local boats: grilled octopus salad, squid stuffed with feta, grilled lobster with oregano, alongside Greek wines and local beers.

Argo, Fira

Argo stands on Fira's main footpath above the caldera, a low-key room with white wooden tables and nautical decor. The kitchen takes Greek and Santorinian dishes and adjusts them rather than reinventing them: grilled octopus with a spicy sauce, a Santorini salad built on the island's small local tomatoes, steaks and fish of the day. Being on the footpath makes it one of the easiest of these to reach on foot, and one of the busiest at sunset.

Volkan on the Rocks, Firostefani

Volkan is on the caldera path at Firostefani, a short walk north of Fira, spread across roughly 2,000 square metres of garden terraces on a promontory above the crater. It works as a restaurant and a snack bar, and in summer as an open-air cinema, which is what separates it from every other terrace on this stretch of cliff.

The food is Cycladic and mostly informal: smoked mackerel with tomato and oregano on flatbread, salads, grilled octopus, local ingredients through most of the menu.

The boats anchored below are in view from the terrace all evening, and many charter guests exploring Greece by gulet combine their days at sea with an evening here, riding the cable car up from the old port and walking the cliff path north.