Il Borro Tuscan Bistro is the Greek room of Il Borro, the Tuscan estate the Ferragamo family owns, and it stands on the waterfront at Elounda Peninsula, in Elounda on the coast of Crete, with many of its tables set directly over the water. The honey, the olive oil, the flour, the pasta and the wine travel from Tuscany to Crete, and the card was written by the estate’s own executive chef with the hotel’s kitchen.
The room opened in July 2022, the first Il Borro Tuscan Bistro in Greece. The bistro began on the estate itself and left Tuscany for the first time in 2017, when one opened in Dubai. Its interior is built on Tuscan detail: wood panelling, wrought iron and marble.
The menu and its author
The menu is the work of Andrea Campani, executive chef of Il Borro, written with the Elounda Peninsula kitchen. Campani arrived at Il Borro in 2013 and directs every kitchen on the estate.
The antipasti open with a board of Tuscan salumi and pecorino, served with homemade sauces and Il Borro honey, and go on to pappa al pomodoro, the bread and tomato soup, and a carpaccio of chianina beef. Pecorino comes fried, in the manner of saganaki, with spiced onion and a citrus salad.
Among the first courses are gnudi of ricotta and chard under a pecorino cream with truffle, handmade tagliatelle of spelt flour in duck ragù, Gragnano penne in a sauce of fresh tomato and aglione garlic from the Valdichiana, and a carnaroli risotto with asparagus and red mullet. The main courses run from a bistecca alla fiorentina with white beans and baked potatoes to peposo, beef stewed in red wine with black pepper, grilled octopus with Tuscan chickpeas, and a Mediterranean sea bass baked in a crust of salt and herbs. Pizzas are on the same card, one of them with buffalo mozzarella and Tuscan prosciutto. Dessert keeps a crostata del Borro with raspberry and the estate’s honey, and cantuccini with vinsanto.
What comes from the estate
The estate sends organic honey, seasonal vegetables from the Orto del Borro, organic extra virgin olive oil, wholewheat flours and organic pasta with a low gluten content. The 2026 dinner card states that the salads are dressed with Il Borro’s own Tuscan extra virgin olive oil. The wine list carries the estate’s own wine, made from its organic vineyards.
The farm in Tuscany
Il Borro holds 1,100 hectares under organic management in the Valdarno, in Tuscany, 85 of them given to vines and 40 to olive groves. Ferruccio Ferragamo has owned the estate since 1993 and runs it with his children Salvatore and Vittoria, entirely organically. The whole farm has been organic since 2015, and the winery now makes 12 labels.
Music and the Saturday opera night
The room has a lounge of its own, where dinner runs alongside live music or a DJ. On Saturday the bistro holds an opera night outdoors, under the stars.
The hotel and the resort around it
Elounda Peninsula is the waterfront hotel of the Elounda Collection, three hotels on one resort in Elounda, and sea transfers run between the properties.
Who is this for
The bistro suits a traveller who wants Italian cooking in Crete with the farm behind it named, and anyone curious about how a Tuscan kitchen cooks away from home. Lunch is served as well as dinner, so the table takes a slow afternoon between swims as readily as an evening by the sea. The mood is a bistro one, open to the bay, where the plates are made for sharing.
