Selene, the table that taught Santorini to cook

Selene is the oldest argument on Santorini that the island’s own produce belongs in fine dining. It is at Fira town, Santorini, inside Katikies Garden, and the setting is an eighteenth-century Catholic monastery. Two cave cellars underneath it work as a tasting room in their own right, in the hours before dinner service begins.

Giorgos and Evelyn Hatzigiannakis opened it in the mid-1980s. Evelyn is an architect, and she picked a building in Fira with a wide terrace and the volcano in front of it. He came to the work from outside it. He was born in 1946 in Nikaia, a Piraeus suburb, to a family from Asia Minor, studied at the Industrial School and moved between jobs, and what he had in place of a trade was travel, food and wine. He first saw the island in the mid-1970s, on a trip with Evelyn and a group of architect friends. He was 40 when Selene opened.

In his first season he cooked the way Athens cooked. From the second summer the kitchen was built on what the island itself grows: fava, cherry tomatoes, white aubergines, round courgettes, capers and chlorotyri, a soft island cheese with a sour edge. Then he looked outward to the neighbouring islands, to the cheeses of Ios among other things. The island’s other restaurateurs followed, and the trade came to call him the patriarch of Aegean cuisine.

He left at the close of the 2020 season, after 35 years. The restaurant had already passed to a new owner and moved to its present Fira premises. Ettore Botrini took charge in 2021.

The kitchen

Botrini is Corfiot Italian, born on 14 March 1969 and brought up in Corfu. From 1986 to 1992 he trained and worked with his father Etrusco Botrini, a chef himself, in clubs around the world, and then spent 2 years in the family restaurant, Etrusco, in Corfu. He trained in Monaco and France in 1993 and 1994, and returned to Corfu in 1999 to run Etrusco as head chef. In 2006 he went to Spain for seminars in molecular cooking, and he took practical training beside Martin Berasategui in 2006 and again in 2009. He also keeps Botrini’s in Athens.

There are three degustation menus: Half Moon, Harvest Moon, Full Moon. Dinner is the only service, from 6.30pm; last orders 10pm. Vassilis Economidis runs the room as maître d’, and Nikolas Tzavellas works the floor as sommelier.

The wine

Yiannis Karakasis MW took charge of the wine side at about the time Botrini arrived, and the list is his. He is one of about 400 Masters of Wine in the world, and he has put the weight of it on the Santorinian vineyard. Each menu has two pairing flights: Exploration, drawn entirely from Greece, and Grand Cru, drawn mainly from abroad.

The house bottles wine of its own as well, chosen with Karakasis in blind tasting. Selene Santorini Cuvée Privée is 95 per cent Assyrtiko with a splash of the local aromatic Aidani, from selected vineyards at Vourvoulos, Vothonas and Megalochori, fermented with wild yeasts and matured 6 months on fine lees at Anhydrous winery. The second is a rosé of Moschofilero with a splash of Agiorgitiko, made by Troupis winery, the Moschofilero grown on the Mantinia plateau in Arcadia at 650 metres and the Agiorgitiko in mountainous Corinthia.

The cave cellars

The tastings are held underground, and the cellars open to daytime guests from 11.30am to 6.30pm, before the kitchen starts. St Joseph Wine Cave holds most of them. La Cave Saint Vincent holds the Master of Wine table where the blind tasting is poured.

Five themed flights in the cave cellars run 2 hours each and take a minimum of two guests. One takes in Greek wine broadly, one stays on Santorini, and one sets the volcanic wines of the world beside each other. The blind tasting puts Greek bottles against the rest of the world. The widest ranges across Champagne, the Mosel, Santorini, Burgundy, Naoussa, Tuscany, Sicily and Bordeaux.

Who is this for

Selene suits a guest who will give a whole evening to a long degustation with a flight poured beside it, and who wants Assyrtiko and the Santorinian vineyard read closely rather than sampled. The ground is a monastery and the ceilings are vaulted stone. An afternoon in the cellars and a table the same night make a day of Santorini wine on their own, and the cellar table wants a party of at least two.