Chrisovoulo is the gourmet restaurant and cafe-bar of Moni Emvasis Luxury Suites, inside the walled Lower Town of the Monemvasia rock in Laconia. The name is the chrysobull, the gold-sealed writ of the Byzantine emperors. The kitchen is led by George Tsimpidis, who cooks traditional Greek dishes alongside contemporary ones.

The cooking is Laconian produce, Greek tradition recast for contemporary palates, and the olive oil in every dish is extra virgin, from the house’s own farms.

The room reads as a medieval Venetian building, with tall buttressed ceilings over marble and stone floors. The restaurant belongs to a house of three suites. The carte carries the official Deluxe category classification, and breakfast is served from 9am to 11am.

The carte

Meat and fish come off a Josper charcoal oven. The first courses begin with the chef’s own bread and spreads and run through baked Mastelo cheese from Chios under paprika, orange marmalade and sesame seeds, crayfish tails wrapped in kataifi pastry with a spicy mousse of taramosalata, and a homemade sausage stuffed with parmesan and black truffle. Shrimps come with a cream of fava beans, cherry tomatoes and capers. An octopus tentacle in artichoke puree with a spicy and sour sauce is 22 euros.

The salad that carries the restaurant’s own name is rocket and spinach, three colours of pepper, cherry tomatoes, radishes, carrots, pickled sea weeds and cactus leaves, marinated mushrooms and smoked pork from Mani, dressed with a citrus vinaigrette. Elsewhere on the carte there is a risotto made with Kozani saffron and mint, black tagliatelle with crayfish tails and fish roe from Mesologi, and a baby lamb knucklebone braised with tarragon and honey.

The main dishes carry the beef. A Black Angus tagliata comes under a gravy sauce with a rocket and parmesan salad, at 38 euros; a rib eye arrives with buttered asparagus, carrots and zucchini in a béarnaise, at 44; a grilled beef fillet takes aromatic butter and sautéed baby potatoes, at 30. Iberico pork chops come with grilled vegetables and a Porto sauce, and a pork tenderloin is stuffed with green apple, mushrooms, chives and thyme under a smoked Metsovo cheese sauce. Off the fish section there are a salmon fillet with caramelised fennel on celeriac puree, a sea bass fillet in parsnip cream with tabbouleh, and grilled calamari with a Louisa sauce.

Fish is priced by the kilo, from 78 euros: fried red mullet from Monemvasia, and the fish of the day at the same figure. Lobster is by the kilo too, at 125 euros. A vegan list runs alongside the rest, from fava beans to a spinach risotto with tomato, dill and olive oil.

Malvasia on the list

The list is Malvasia-led, with tastings through the year. Malvasia is the native Monemvasian wine whose history on the rock reaches back to Venetian rule: Venetian and Genoese traders of the 13th century gave the local Monemvasios wine the name, and it was drunk in the salons of European nobility through the medieval and renaissance eras. It was lost under the Turkish occupation, which destroyed the vineyards that made it, and local producers have spent decades on the research and the old farming methods that brought it back.

The restaurant keeps a wine bar as well, pouring the local wines with Greek and international small plates.

The bar and the morning

The house also keeps a contemporary street bar on the main cobbled path that leads through the citadel, where the drinks are cocktails, a wide selection of Greek wines from the region and beyond, and mezedes to go with them.

Breakfast is coffee and fruity teas with homemade sweet and savoury dishes, and a late one, or brunch, can be taken on the sea view terrace.

Who is this for

It suits anyone staying inside the citadel who would rather not leave the walls for dinner, and anyone who has spent the day on the rock and wants Laconia on a plate at the end of it. Lounge music plays under the stone, and the terrace looks out to sea. Come with an interest in wine, and ask what came out of the water that morning.