Featured in the Winter 2024 issue of Travel Life magazine
Culinary traditions run deep—and bring people together—in this foodie-focused area in the Western Cyclades.
by Diana Ballon
It’s a balmy Saturday night in the village of Artemonas on the small Greek island of Sifnos in the Western Cyclades. This evening people are singing and dancing in the street, a traditional Greek fusion band is playing and two women are being interviewed on stage about how to cook okra bread—speaking with such passion and large hand gestures that I forget I don’t understand Greek.
People swarm around two long tables in the central square as women proudly dole out samples of homecooked delicacies from their islands. There’s everything from a moist, not overly sweet watermelon pie, or karpouzopita, from Milos; a protein-filled fava bean spread from the island of Schinoussa; loukoumades or deep-fried honey-drenched dough balls from Oropos; and a minerally Assyrtiko wine from Santorini.
The occasion? It’s the annual Cycladic Gastronomy Festival “Nikolaos Tselementes,” honouring the cultural and culinary traditions of the Cycladic Islands, which form a circle of about 24 islands in the Aegean Sea southeast of mainland Greece.
The festival is named after celebrity chef Nikolaos Tselementes who was born on Sifnos and wrote the definitive Hellenic cookbook, the Greek version of America’s The Joy of Cooking, that came out in full edition in 1932, and was the first cookbook in Greece.
“It went to every single home in the country,” says a volunteer at the festival.
Sifnos Events guide and planner Ronia Anastasiadou, who leads us in a home-cooking experience from her own kitchen on Sifnos, was actually one of the festival’s founders. As she explains, the festival was developed as a way to bring islanders close together when they can’t travel easily between the islands, while focusing on food as something they share. It was also to honour Tselementes.
“It was through this chef and other local cooks and chefs who worked in Athens or other countries, that Sifnos got its reputation as a food destination. People eventually learnt, if you want a good chef, find a Sifnian. If you want a good catering service, find a Sifnian. It was part of what put the small island of Sifnos on the map as a foodie destination.”
Proving the idea that Greek cooking is both delicious and simple, Ronia leads us through a cooking experience, which includes chopping ingredients for tzatziki, rolling ground veal into meatballs and roasting vegetables for an eggplant salad.
Other traditional island dishes involve soaking legumes or stewing meats; all things that aren’t necessarily labour intense, but require patience and time. These include Sifnos’s signature chickpea soup, or revithia; along with mastelo, a lamb dish cooked slowly with wine and dill in a clay pot until it is tender and falling off the bone. While Sifnians make mastelo at Easter time, it’s available at restaurants and taverns all year round.
And with more cheese being eaten per capita in Greece than any other European country, you can expect far more than the typical feta. On Sifnos, manoura is made with sheep and goat’s milk, preserved in wine and formed into rounds without requiring any refrigeration. Another is myzithra, which is soft and rich and often used in salads.
In Ronia’s kitchen, our cooking experience ends with dinner. Our plates laden, we open a bottle of rosé and sit around the kitchen table to enjoy hearty zucchini and tomato fritters, along with the fruits of our labours, served on the traditional earthenware for which Sifnos is so famous.
Like so much of Greek cooking, it’s the fresh ingredients and the judicious use of herbs and olive oil, that allow the food to speak for itself, inviting diners to fill the space with lively conversation.