Sumosan is the Japanese restaurant on the Elounda Peninsula waterfront, on the bay at Elounda in eastern Crete. Its season is summer only and its service dinner only. The card is contemporary Japanese, created by the group’s executive chef, Bubker Belkhit, and the tables are set above the water, with a long wine list and cocktails given a Japanese turn. The address is the Elounda Peninsula All Suite Hotel at Pigadakia, Elounda 720 53, Crete.
The room opened on 15 May 2023, the first Sumosan in Greece. It was the second kitchen the hotel had brought in from abroad in two years. Il Borro Tuscan Bistro, the Greek table of the Ferragamo family’s Tuscan estate, had opened at the same hotel in 2022, so Elounda Peninsula now has two restaurants running under names that arrived from somewhere else.
The hands behind the card
Belkhit has worked with Sumosan’s founder, Janina Wolkow, for more than 20 years, and he was instrumental in creating Sumosan itself. The kitchen is known for sushi and sashimi held to a high standard and for Japanese dishes of its own invention, a modern reading of traditional techniques and ingredients.
What the card carries
The opening menu in 2023 led on three dishes: the Sumosan lobster salad, a black cod marinated in miso for 24 hours, and a wagyu fillet sando served with truffle fries. The lobster salad has stayed. It is on the 2026 dinner menu with Lollo Bionda lettuce and what the kitchen calls its secret dressing, and the black cod is there too, grilled and finished in miso sauce.
Around them the 2026 card is built on raw fish and the grill. Sashimi and sushi are served by the piece: Scottish salmon, yellowtail, eel, seabass, bluefin tuna, scallop and prawn. The cold starters take in a new style sashimi trio of bluefin tuna, salmon and seabass with truffle and ponzu, a yellowtail tiradito under truffle yuzu vinaigrette and truffle shavings, and sashimi taquitos with avocado and spicy mayo. The maki rolls run from a spicy bluefin tuna roll to a California with crab, avocado and orange tobiko, and a roll of rock shrimp tempura with spicy mayo. The warm starters include chicken karaage with gochujang, wagyu beef tacos with mango and passion fruit salsa, and crispy rice with salmon or with bluefin tuna, wasabi tobiko and spicy mayo.
From the grill come a wagyu ribeye, silver graded and cut to 180 grams, with shichimi togarashi and yakitori sauce; a black Angus tenderloin with chimichurri; and a roasted miso baby chicken under miso sauce and grilled lime. Beside them sit glazed aubergine in miso sesame sauce, broccolini with yuzu butter and almond flakes, grilled corn with spicy yuzu kosho butter, and a wagyu beef fried rice. Dessert keeps the Sumosan chocolate fondant, a dark chocolate fondant with a molten white chocolate centre, matcha and vanilla ice cream.
Where else the group sits
By 2021 Sumosan ran six restaurants worldwide, one of them in Knightsbridge in London. It now lists rooms in Courchevel, Berlin, Bahrain, Montenegro, Nicosia and Cairo, and Elounda is no longer its only Greek address. A second room sits on the Athenian Riviera, at 58 Leoforos Poseidonos in Glyfada.
Who is this for
Sumosan suits a family dinner, a night out with friends or a couple’s evening, and the room is a busy, bustling one where dinner becomes the event of the night. The terrace sits under a canopy, low tables and lanterns facing the lit bay and the bare Cretan hills behind it, and the Aegean fills the view from every seat. A traveller who already knows the group from Courchevel or Berlin will recognise the service and the welcome.
