Dining in Larnaca, Cyprus

There are any number of places to eat in and around the seaside town of Larnaka, but it’s a little more difficult if what you want is true local flavour that’s a bit different from the "international" cuisine offered by the big seafront tourist places (courtesy of the freezer and the microwave). Having spent two winters on the island, and a large part of a couple of summers, here is my selection of good value and definitely non-tourist restaurants: no picture menus, no calamari and chips, and no burgers. Before that, though, I have included an essential guide to the staple item on any Cypriot menu--the legendary "meze."

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Vlachos is a small basic taverna on the Dekhelia tourist strip about 8 kilometres east of Larnaka town centre. Open for dinner seven days a week, it’s always busy, winter and summer, with an unusually mixed clientele of locals, ex-pats and tourists, so if you’re going Thursday, Friday or Saturday night, it’s best to book.

Food is basic, mostly meat, and mostly grilled, the portions are huge, and while the service can be a little too rapid at times (you can still be working your way through the salads when the next course arrives), the buzzy ambiance, and the price, more than make up for this. Vegetarians are very poorly served here though, and you’d be advised, too, to steer clear of the fish, which is imported and frozen.

Salad is accompanied by the usual pitta and olives, but you get beetroot and pilaf as standard with it too, and they offer a good range of other cold appetisers, most of which are home-made, and all very reasonable. There are some nice hot appetisers too, the mushrooms with eggs being particularly delicious. Standard mains such as moussaka, souvlaki and souvla all come with huge portions of excellent chips, and the Vlachos mixed grill has a bit of absolutely everything, including the local village sausages, and haloumi cheese! Tavas (beef stew) and kleftiko (lamb slow cooked in the oven) have to be ordered a day in advance, and there are sometimes seasonal specialities available that aren’t on the menu such as snails. It’s always possible, too, to ask to try something that you see another table eating, so don’t be shy.

But if you’re up for it, do try the meze. It’s just £7.50 per person, and while some of it is not for the squeamish, there is so much choice that you will find plenty to try even if you leave a quarter of it. The meze doesn’t vary much from week to week, although some things, such as snails, are seasonal. You get all the usual appetisers such as salad and olives, pilaf, beetroot and tzatziki, but usually also a selection of seasonal greens – such as pickled caperberry leaves, complete with thorns! There’s mushrooms and onions scrambled in egg with a dash of sherry, snails – sometimes large, sometimes small - and grilled haloumi with bacon. There’s blood sausages, chicken livers simmered until tender in red wine vinegar, grilled beef liver, lamb brain cooked in tomato sauce, and "sweets" – kebabs made of choice cuts of heart, lung and intestine – at Vlachos they make use of everything! And for the more traditional taste there’s pork fillet, kebab, sheftalia and lamb chops. Oh yes, of course there’s chips too, and fruit to finish. Vlachos has a very reasonable range of wine and drinks, and is open for dinner seven days. A meal for two will rarely set you back above £20, so it’s well worth the trip out of town.

Just under a kilometre from the centre of town, away from the tourist restaurants and their picture menus, there are a clutch of tavernas on the main road. Slightly cheaper than the main drag, the food is definitely not of the "calamari and chips" variety, and there are no waiters hovering outside waiting to hustle you in. The Pytharka is decorated in traditional style, with big windows that open up onto the terrace (unfortunately facing directly onto the main road) in the summer. Open seven days, on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sunday nights there is live traditional music. The taverna is family run, with Chara in charge of the kitchen, and Andy in front of house (and occasionally singing with the band). Most of Chara’s recipes were passed down from her grandmother, and it is the simplicity of the cooking that is its strength.

What’s available depends very much upon what’s in season at the market, but some classic bean dishes such as louvi me lahana (black-eyed beans with chard), and fasoulaki (French beans cooked in red wine, with or without lamb) are standards. We popped in for lunch one day, and the simple but very fresh food, and Chara’s enthusiasm for her traditional cooking, tempted us back for the "traditional" meze a few nights later. A litre of house red (£7) was accompanied by traditional "nibbles" of cheese, smoked ham and smoked lamb. You can get a grill meze at the Pytharka featuring all the usual suspects, and you can also opt out of the meze and have the usual selection of meats from the grill, as well as some of the vegetarian dishes I had tried for lunch. But we went for the "traditional" version of the meze at £8.50.

A meze for two can be overwhelming, but at the Pytharka, the portions were just right. Along with the home-made bread and the usual selection of appetisers, we had a potato salad dressed with lemon and herbs, another mashed potato dish with garlic, hot grilled black olives, carrot salad and a kohlrabi salad. And then came spare ribs, village sausage and sheftalia. And then there were dolmades and keftedes, kolokassi in tomato sauce, two or three aubergine dishes, Lefkara lamb, another baked lamb dish, village macaroni, spinach with cheese, snails, roast potatoes (a welcome change from chips) – and a lot more. The variety of tastes and flavourings, the combination of baked and grilled food, and the concentration of vegetable dishes, made the meal delicious rather than the epic of endurance that a grill meze often is. We even managed the fruit accompanied by small pastry parcels stuffed with apple and cinnamon that made up dessert. Everything was home made, and the dishes came at a leisurely pace, and service was attentive without being intrusive. The Pytharka is that unusual thing in the centre of Larnaka, a real traditional taverna serving authentic local food.

The best way to sample Cypriot cooking is by trying a meze, simply a collection of lots of little dishes served for sharing, made up of whatever is available in the kitchen on that day.In order to make the best of a meze, here are a two simple points worth bearing in mind: don’t feel obliged to eat everything; and take your time.All mezes start in the same way, with a selection salads and cold appetisers served with bread or pita. In the more touristy places, these are almost all the same, and rarely are the appetisers homemade: salad is the standard ‘village’ variety, usually with feta; and the appetisers are tzatziki, olives and tahini, which is made from garlic and sesame seeds. However, if you pick a good restaurant, you’re likely to get a lot more: beetroot; cold green beans (called fasoulaki); pickled caper berry leaves; a selection of greens such as dandelion leaves, kohl rabbi, coriander and artichoke leaves; carrot and cheese; and endless versions of potato salad. What follows next depends upon the type of meze you have ordered. Grill mezes are the most common, and consist almost entirely of meat, accompanied by chips—not a good vegetarian meal. You’ll always get sheftalia, which is a cross between a sausage and a burger made of pork and held together with caul or stomach lining (and much tastier than they sound); and there will always be some form of souvlaki, which is chunks of grilled pork. The rest will depend very much on the season and the preferences of the kitchen: grilled liver; lamb chops; grilled sweet meats (offal); local liver sausage; chicken; and occasionally stews such as afelia (pork flavoured with coriander). A fish meze, very rarely includes any meat, but if you’re expecting a feast of fresh sea food and fish, forget it. The Mediterranean in and around Cyprus yields very little, and the Cypriots are in any case far too fond of cooking on a grill or in a deep fat fryer to make the best of what is on offer. Most of the fried fish is done in a light batter, and served whole, so the overall effect can be both sickening and unsatisfying at the same time. As with the grill version, there are some basics you’ll always get: barbouni are small red mullet, caught locally, deep fried in batter and served whole (and whether you eat the whole thing or choice cuts depends entirely on you); calamari is squid rings done in batter, and is always of the frozen imported variety; small, locally caught squid are usually fried and served whole; and ochtapodi krasato is a delicious stew of octopus in red wine. Depending, as always, upon season and the choice of the kitchen, you may also get prawns (nearly always imported); local whitebait; small deep fried meatballs, usually made with fish and potato; deep fried local baby crab, which are delicious and almost like crisps; small sea bass, served cold; or a fish stew. The end of the main course is a whole grilled fish, usually sea bream, served split open with herbs and butter. And, of course, you get chips.A traditional meze is not always an offer, but when it is, it is probably the best way of sampling genuine local cuisine using ingredients in season. This is a good option, too, for vegetarians, although you need to watch out for meat stock. The variety of food offered as part of a traditional meze is much more varied, and much more dependant upon what is in season, but it is safe to say that you will probably get some form of potato that is not chips, you’ll get a dish of eggs with mushroom, spinach or courgette, and that aubergines will feature. The really good thing about a traditional meze is its unpredictability and variety: spare ribs; liver stewed in red wine; baby potatoes roasted in the kleftiko oven; karaoli yahni, fantastically tasty tiny little snails that you suck out of their shells, cooked in tomatoes or rice; melinttzanes yiahni, aubergines stewed in tomatoes and garlic; endless varieties of baked feta; roasted olives; baked lamb brain; baked wild mushrooms; vegetable stew made with beans or kolokassi, a root vegetable that tastes a bit like smoked potato; and loukanika, small versions of the local liver sausage.The variety is endless, and you never get the same combination, even in the same restaurant. You’ll get a pat on the back from the proprietor for ordering it, and on top of all that, a traditional meze is always cheaper than either the grill or the fish variety.All mezes end with fruit, fresh or candied, and in some cases a pastry such as bourekia, which is like a small parcel filled with honey or stewed apple. Coffee too, is included, although if you don’t want the Cypriot variety (sketo with no sugar, metrios with a little) which is certainly an acquired taste, you’ll get Nescafe. Fruit is whatever is in season— tangerines, oranges, bananas and kiwi in the winter, melon and cactus fruit in the summer. As a rule, the more local the clientele, the more likely it is that it will include some less common varieties.Ordering a meze with an open mind and an empty stomach is a treat to the visitor, and to the Cypriots it’s a way of life. You won’t regret trying it.