Mykonos

Mykonos charges Saint Tropez prices with island logistics. The chefs are good, the rooms are beautiful, and the meltemi decides more about your evening than your menu does.

Mykonos is a logistics problem with a view. Almost everything except fish, cheese and herbs arrives by ferry, the island’s roads were not built for catering vans, and the meltemi can blow at thirty knots for three days in July. What makes it work is a professional season trade: chefs who cook in Athens or London for nine months and return, staff who know which villa has a functioning cold room, and suppliers who hold allocations for their regulars.

The price level is the highest in Greece by a wide margin. A four course plated dinner for sixteen on a villa terrace, with chef, sous chef and three waiters, runs 4,800 to 7,500 euros in August including food and rentals, and a private chef is 800 to 1,100 euros a day. In June the same evening is a third less. Rentals are the painful line: glass and china come from Athens or from a local company with limited stock, and the delivery to a hillside villa is priced accordingly.

The cooking that suits the island is a table of small plates followed by one large shared centrepiece: a whole fish baked in salt, a lamb shoulder from the oven, a grilled octopus that does not mind waiting. Wind argues against anything plated with foam or height, and the late Greek dinner hour means the kitchen runs from nine to midnight. Build a menu that tolerates a thirty minute delay and you will have the evening everyone remembers.