Varoulko Santorini is the restaurant of Grace Hotel, Imerovigli, Santorini, 15 minutes from Oia. It stands high above the Aegean with the sunset in front of it, and it cooks a modern reading of traditional Greek food on the island’s own produce and on the fish its kitchen buys from Aegean fishermen each day. Lefteris Lazarou is the chef-patron. He opened the room on 15 April 2022, the second house to carry a name he built in Athens, and put his protégé Komninos Mouflouzelis in the kitchen as head chef.
The card is led by seafood. Lazarou names the shrimp ceviche koilados, with blood orange, pomegranate and ginger, as the dish to order at his own table. Among the other starters is a fish soup of tomato with a rock fish and grouper broth. The whole fish of the day is grilled or baked in a salt crust and brought out for two with Greek dips, salad, shrimp saganaki and steamed vegetables.
The kitchen Lazarou brought with him
Lazarou is a Piraeus man and the son of a ship’s cook, and he sailed with his father on international voyages before he had a kitchen of his own. In 1987 he opened the first Varoulko in Athens, where he used seafood in fine dining for the first time in the country and turned attention onto the fish and crustaceans Greek restaurants had snubbed. Several of those dishes have since become classics. The Athens house is called Varoulko Seaside, and Imerovigli is the second address of the name.
On the card
Starters run from an oyster with peach granita and smoked mussel cream to Greek crab with pickled carrot, Osetra caviar and a sesame and fennel biscuit, and grilled scallops with caramelised onion, grape pickles and a bitter almond emulsion. Among the mains are a fish fillet with celeriac textures, Greek coffee and yuzu, tuna with grilled cabbage, watercress and carob honey, a beef stifado finished with Santorini Vinsanto, and lamb and lobster with Tinos artichokes, fried fava and mushrooms. At the opening the signatures were squid with pesto Genovese and a crayfish tartar with fresh basil and yuzu.
Lazarou’s squid with basil pesto goes back to 1994. Ouzo lights the squid, and the pesto is ground with pistachios from Aegina rather than pine nuts.
Puddings keep to three: a lemon with almond sablé, ginger, tonka bean ice cream and black pepper; a baklava with orange cream, spices and pistachio; and a dark chocolate with caramel, coffee, smoked aubergine, Vinsanto and an exotic fruit sorbet.
The island in the cooking
Lazarou says the Santorini house has found a voice of its own since 2022, built on island fava and on the indigenous Assyrtiko that grows in the same volcanic ground, both set beside the fish. “I don’t want to disguise the raw ingredient,” he says. “Technique must serve the flavor, not overshadow it.” Of his own table he says the experience “begins with the view and the feel of the sea, continues through dishes that combine memory, seasonality, and creativity, and is completed with warm Greek hospitality”.
He names the growers he rates on the island, among them the Yiannis Nomikos estate, which dry-farms the PDO fava and oversees it from the field to the packing, and Santo Wines, which has kept the dry-farmed Santorini cherry tomato in cultivation.
Dinner runs daily, 19.00 to 22.00. Smart casual is the dress code. The restaurant has a Greek wine list of its own selection, and tables look out to the sea.
Who is this for
It suits a traveller who plans one serious dinner on Santorini and wants it spent on fish. The setting is a 20-room cliffside hotel in the village of Imerovigli, with tables indoors and out and a mood that is elegant and contemporary. The 363 Bar sits alongside, 363 metres above sea level, for a drink at either end of the meal. A reader who already knows sea bass and bream will meet the humbler Aegean species here, the ones Lazarou spent a career arguing for.
