Dionysos is laid out in a garden of century-old olive trees at Elounda Beach Hotel & Villas, in the Lasithi prefecture of Crete. The garden is built to the plan of a village square. Tables go down under the trees and between stone arches, with rotundas covered in linen, and the resort’s white chapel stands behind the grove. The cooking is Modern Mediterranean.
What the kitchen sends
Albert Hazma works from Cretan produce and from what the boats bring in. The Mediterranean salad is dressed with xygalo, the sour cream cheese from Sitia, and comes with cherry tomatoes, celery and radish. A broccolini salad takes sesame, black quinoa and rice paper. The beef tartare arrives with brioche, caper, pickled cucumber and egg, and the octopus carpaccio is plated with fish roe, almond, red pepper and turmeric.
The hot appetisers are a soup of peas, rice ravioli, white fish and mint, a pumpkin risotto with taleggio, chives and thyme, an egg with corn, chorizo, fried bread and leek, and a ravioli of beef flat iron, scamorza, guanciale and basil.
Three of the four fish are landed locally or wild-caught. White grouper is wild-caught, and comes under a fricassee of wild greens, with lime, mussels and fennel. Beside it are locally sourced sea bass with snow peas, topinambur, kaffir lime and kombu, Cretan wild-caught dorado with parsnip, lemon and salicorn, and a Mediterranean cod with celery root, caper, wild garlic and a bianco sauce. The beef fillet is set against white carrot, king oyster mushroom, Aegina pistachio and sherry, and the lamb against pumpkin, ginger, red radicchio and tonka. The hotel says it supports local farmers and food suppliers, and uses zero-mile ingredients where it can.
The dessert list is six lines, each named for one thing: a canelé, a chocolate, a lemon, a yogurt, fresh fruits, and a selection of ice cream and sorbet.
The list and the cellar
The wine list at Dionysos carries more than 500 labels, Greek and international, drawn from the hotel’s cellar. It opens on grande-marque Champagne, with Krug Grand Cuvée among it and Armand de Brignac Blanc de Blancs at the top of the section by price. Behind that list the resort keeps a cellar of 1,100 labels, local and international.
Crete runs through the Greek whites in depth. The Douloufakis, Lyrarakis, Alexakis, Maragakis and Strataridakis estates are all there, with Vidiano, Vilana, Dafni, Plyto and Thrapsathiri among the grapes. Santorini follows with Assyrtiko from the Argyros, Vassaltis, Sigalas and Hatzidakis estates. The Cretan reds run to 14 bottles. Four of them put Syrah with Kotsifali, and the rest spread across Syrah on its own, Liatiko, Mandilari, Kotsifali with Mandilari and Cabernet Sauvignon, with a Symbolo of Syrah and Mandilari from Lyrarakis the dearest among them.
Wine by the glass runs across white, rosé and red, Crete and Macedonia and central Greece beside Italy and Germany. The Cretan pours include Vidiano from Maragakis, Vilana from Lyrarakis, a rosé of Mandilari and Kotsifali from Gavalas, and a Syrah and Kotsifali in red.
Before you go
The room is open April to October, daily, and serves 19:00 to 23:00, dinner only. The dress code runs smart casual to formal, and a dinner is EUR 80 to EUR 100 a head. Menu prices include service and taxes.
Who is this for
The room suits a couple marking something, a small party happy to order across the menu, and anyone who likes to settle the wine before the food. Children eat from a short list of their own: oven-baked sea bass with a purée of white carrot, or beef fillets with hand-cut chips. Expect ingredients paired in ways you would not predict. Hotel guests book through the concierge, and the resort’s sommelier runs tastings in the cellar by appointment.
