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Freddo, Loukoumades and the Long Santorini Afternoon

Santorini, GreeceMay 9, 20252 min read
By MASA Editors
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A seafood lunch on a waterside table in Fira, Santorini: marinated fish, octopus and meze plates with a glass of white wine above the blue Aegean.01
A seafood lunch on a waterside table in Fira, Santorini: marinated fish, octopus and meze plates with a glass of white wine above the blue Aegean.Photo: Anastase Maragos / Unsplash

Between the caldera photographs there is a quieter Santorini built on iced coffee, syrup-soaked pastry and a shaded chair with a view. A guide to the island’s café hours and what to order in them.

Santorini's reputation is built on sunsets, but the island's actual rhythm is set earlier in the day, in the shaded hours when the light is too fierce for walking and everybody sits down. Learn the café vocabulary and the island opens up considerably.

What to order

Greek coffee culture is specific and worth getting right.

  • Freddo espresso: espresso shaken with ice into a cold foam. The national default, and correct in almost every situation.
  • Freddo cappuccino: the same, topped with cold whipped milk foam. Sweeter, softer, dangerously easy.
  • Frappe: instant coffee whipped to a thick head, older and more nostalgic. Order it metrios for medium sweetness.
  • Ellinikos: traditional Greek coffee, simmered in a small copper briki and served with the grounds settled at the bottom. Sip slowly and do not drain the cup.

Sweetness is ordered, not assumed. Sketos is unsweetened, metrios medium, glykos sweet — four words that will improve every coffee you drink in Greece.

A taverna dinner table set with Greek meze, grilled seafood and a bread basket at the water's edge in Fira, Santorini, at sunset.
A taverna dinner table set with Greek meze, grilled seafood and a bread basket at the water's edge in Fira, Santorini, at sunset.Photo: Anastase Maragos / Unsplash

The pastry side

Loukoumades are the island's best street sweet: yeasted dough fried to order, drenched in honey syrup and dusted with cinnamon or crushed walnut. Eat them within about four minutes of purchase.

For sit-down sweets, look for galaktoboureko, a semolina custard baked in phyllo and soaked in syrup, and bougatsa, its flakier breakfast cousin. Baklava is everywhere and varies wildly in quality — judge by how crisp the top leaves look, not by the display case.

Two sweets are properly Santorinian. Melitinia are small open cheese tarts made with the island's soft fresh cheese and traditionally tied to Easter, so they are seasonal rather than year-round. Koufeto, a preserve of white pumpkin and almonds, is a wedding sweet, and turns up in shops selling local produce.

Where to sit

Fira has the most cafés and the widest caldera terraces, which means the highest prices and the best people-watching, especially in the late afternoon as the cruise crowds thin. Firostefani and Imerovigli, just north along the rim, offer the same view with a fraction of the noise.

Inland is the better bet for the long, slow version. Pyrgos, the island's highest village, has small squares under bougainvillea where a coffee costs a fraction of the rim price. Megalochori and Emporio are similar: whitewashed lanes, a church bell, very little happening. In Oia, a browse through the well-known cellar bookshop cut into the lane is a good way to fill the hour before the light turns.

Kitchens and cafés keep long hours in high season and shorten dramatically in winter, and many caldera-edge places close entirely between November and March.

Tip: The rim terraces charge for the view, and in the hour before sunset many enforce minimum spends or reservations. Arrive around 5pm, order slowly, and you will hold the seat for the price of a coffee and a plate of loukoumades.

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