Armyra by Papaioannou is the fish room of The Romanos, a Luxury Collection Resort, at Navarino Dunes on the southwest coast of the Peloponnese. It has kept that place since 2015, and it keeps one service: dinner only.
The kitchen is fish and seafood, with Messenian produce and Kalamata olive oil around them. The fish comes from what the brand calls the hidden corners and forgotten villages of Greece, reached through Giorgos Papaioannou’s own relationships with fishermen and farmers. The Mediterranean-inspired menu then goes beyond the fish, blending it with the local delicacies of Messinia.
From the Mikrolimano backstreets
Papaioannou was born in Piraeus in 1976, and the port is where he learned fish. His family’s fish restaurant stood through the 1990s in the backstreets of Mikrolimano, the picturesque marina whose name means little port, and his father was his mentor there: how to cook fish and seafood in traditional and inventive ways, and how to approach what the Greek waters give. In the spring of 2013 he moved the family business out of the backstreets and onto the Mikrolimano seafront, with the water of the Koumoundourou marina in front of the tables. By then Papaioannou was already a household name among people who care about fish and seafood, and the move put that name on the waterfront. Armyra is the travelling form of that kitchen.
Who cooks it
Papaioannou does not cook each service at Costa Navarino. He supervises the kitchen and consults on it, and experienced chefs commissioned to the room run the day-to-day operation. Every Armyra is built on that arrangement, which is what lets one kitchen stand in two countries at once. What travels is the sourcing and the method: fish and seafood first, then the local larder of wherever the room has been put. Papaioannou’s stated aim is to put the treasures of Greek nature in front of travellers from elsewhere, and he ties that aim to the fishermen and farmers he buys from.
Sea and earth
Fish and shellfish lead each menu, and the produce of the Messenian countryside sits around them. Herbs and olive oil are as much a part of a dish as the catch. Kalamata extra virgin olive oil is the clearest instance, treated as the purest thing the local land gives and valued for its nutritional worth as much as for what it does to a plate. The restaurant asks a guest to read the Mediterranean diet off the plate, and the ingredients it leans on are the ones the countryside around it grows.
Costa Navarino and Limassol
Armyra has one other address of its own: Amara, Limassol, Cyprus, since 2019. Both rooms sit inside hotels, which is the brand’s chosen form, a Mediterranean dining room placed among a resort’s guests. The brand is developed with the restaurateur Dimos Stasinopoulos, and his part in it is the choice of location: sites that frame the flavours of the sea and the earth, with the service and the Mediterranean welcome to match. On the Messenian estate a second Papaioannou room works beside the fish room. Barbounaki by Papaioannou stands at Navarino Agora, on Navarino Bay, and gives fresh Greek seafood a modern turn. Costa Navarino therefore has two kitchens from one family in two registers, and a guest can have both without leaving the estate.
Who is this for
Armyra suits a guest who wants one evening given to Greek fish, and who is curious about Messinia itself; the room sets out to immerse a visitor in the spirit of the region. Families are as at home here as couples, since it keeps a children’s menu beside its wine and cocktail lists. The welcome is the warm Mediterranean kind, and the ingredients are seasonal, handpicked from around Greece.
