Beefbar Santorini is the Monte-Carlo beef room put into a Cycladic cliff hotel, and the reason to take a table is the part of the list no other Beefbar carries. The address is Andronis Arcadia, Oia, Santorini, 847 02, a few steps from the village, and the restaurant keeps its own telephone line and mailbox separate from the hotel’s. It opened there in June 2023, and the operator’s own page speaks of the room returning each summer, so it keeps to a season.
The format began in Monte-Carlo in 2005, as Riccardo Giraudi’s refusal of steakhouse convention. His standing rests on the trade that came before the restaurants: he was the first importer of Wagyu and of certified Japanese Kobe beef. The group now runs more than 30 concepts across Monaco, the Americas, Europe and Asia. Greece holds three of its addresses, the Astir Palace room in Athens, Beefbar on the Coast in Mykonos and this one in Oia.
The interiors are by Cedric Capron, with Virgil Donat alongside him. Capron is a master craftsman in plastering, painting and decoration, and his artistic direction takes from current fashion and art. Donat brought a cinematic reading of the space.
George Kyrtsallidis holds the kitchen, a Greek cook whose working years ran through Belgium and Denmark before he came back to the islands. Above him sits the group’s executive chef, Thierry Paludetto, who sets the dishes with Giraudi. Dinner daily, 6pm to 10.30pm, is the whole of the service.
The import ledger
Imported direct from six countries is the line the menu prints at the foot of its page, and the six are France, Italy, the United States, Japan, Namibia and Australia, bought with no intermediary from producers the house has selected since 2005.
The Wagyu is listed by farm: First Herd in Australia, Snake River Farms in the United States, Whispering Dunes in Namibia. The Black Angus comes from three ranches, Double R Ranch and Creekstone Farms in the United States and Black Onyx in Australia. The French beef is a Giraudi Selection of its own, and the veal is Van Drie out of the Netherlands.
At the top of the list the Emperor Cuts are priced by weight, 80 to 130 euros per 100g, 200g minimum. Kagoshima, Hokkaido, Miyazaki and Wine-Gyu sit at the foot of that range, Hida and Numamoto in the middle of it, Matsusaka and Kobe at the head. Availability decides which of them a guest can order on any given evening.
The Santorini section
The local material is on the menu. A Santorini Icons section carries two dishes no other Beefbar list holds: a grouper fricassee with baby spinach, monk’s beards and celeriac cream, and lobster, grilled or with pasta.
Greek plates run through the lighter half of the list as well. The Greek salad is built on watermelon, onion, tomato, cucumber and carob rusk with a feta cheese vinaigrette. The red shrimps saganaki uses Greek valley shrimps with tomato jam and Greek feta, and there is a spinach pie salad of crispy phyllo, spinach and cheese. Against the summer heat the kitchen sets a Leaf & Reef register beside the beef: fattoush under stracciatella, tuna ceviche with coconut, crunchy lobster tacos in satay sauce.
The porcelain is particular to the room too. Beefbar’s work with the French maker Bernardaud includes a two-plate starter set created for Santorini alone, sold at the restaurant and on the brand’s own shop and nowhere else.
Who is this for
Beefbar Santorini suits a guest who wants Japanese beef read closely and an island plate beside it, and who is happy to give a whole evening to one table. Andronis Arcadia sits a few steps from Oia and apart from its traffic, so arriving and leaving are quiet. The room looks over the Aegean, and the hotel’s position catches both the water and the sunset. Both the indoor and outdoor areas are smoke-free, and pets cannot be accommodated.
