YAPA Antiparos was the first international outpost of YAPA, the restaurant and cocktail bar in Milan, and it ran for a single season. Matteo Pancetti, the chef who opened the original five years earlier, took his kitchen out of Italy for the first time and set it down in a museum building in Antiparos town. It served from 27 May to 31 August 2026, in the evenings only.
The former Antiparos Folklore Museum had long held the island’s record of its own life, and the summer before it had housed a seasonal pop-up by 10AM Apotheke. Pancetti built the project with two people who already knew the island: Anastasia Tsoureka Saracaki of Luisa World and Thanasis Panourgias, who owns the Antiparos bar Bardot.
The rooms and the marble
Marble by Theodore Psychoyos set the character of the front courtyard, which is where the dining tables went. A communal table cut from two slabs stood at its centre, kept from the pop-up that held the building the year before and carved by Psychoyos for it. Benches and further tables in reclaimed marble, also his, carried that weight through the rest of the space. Indoors, restored plaster cornices sat above chalky walls and terrazzo floors, with a long bar counter in brushed stainless steel running against them, wooden stools along it and an antique cabinet beside. The courtyard read as an urban living room. The rear garden was the pastoral half of the plot, olive trees shading large salvaged tables whose faded green paint matched the raised beds at the far end.
What the kitchen cooked
Pancetti and his team spent the months before opening on the island’s farms, fishing boats and small producers, and on the growers across the water on Paros. What came of it was a list built on Parian olive oil, island cheeses, island-raised lamb and wild fish landed locally, with bread, Greek basil, tomatoes and edible flowers from the same hands. The raised beds grew the Mediterranean vegetables and herbs the kitchen used.
Pancetti learned to cook at his grandmother’s stove in Tuscany, then travelled and worked alongside Sergi Arola, and he reads his own food as Mediterranean in base, Asian in precision and South American in spirit. Milan signatures made the crossing, the ceviche and the Jamón de Tuna among them, and Greek street food entered through dishes such as the Gyros Tartare. Yapa is a Quechua word for the small extra thing a host gives a guest.
The bar
The bar was overseen by Matias Sarli, 80-20ml, YAPA’s bar manager in Milan. The list came off the hillsides: wild olive, fig, thyme, mastic, Phoenician juniper and the Mediterranean shrubs that set the look of the Cyclades. “Despite the island’s dry and windy nature, Antiparos reveals an extraordinary aromatic richness,” Sarli said. “These botanicals have become a new vocabulary for us, allowing us to create cocktails that remain true to Yapa’s nomadic spirit while being deeply rooted in the island itself.”
The signature was the Thanasis, tsipouro with mastic, Mediterranean salt and capers. Mastic came back in the Nomádas, with mezcal, a citrus blend, wild fennel and green chilli, and the alcohol-free 00 Figs was built from fig and mint cordial, fig-leaf soda, citric solution and dealcoholised blue agave.
The Antiparos hours stood apart from Milan’s: Nightly, 19:30 to 01:30, two services, with the bar running on after the second. Bookings went to a telephone line and an email address of their own.
Who is this for
Anyone who takes dinner late and wants the evening to be the whole plan, in a Cycladic town rather than on a beach. Strings of lights hung among the olive branches, and terracotta pots, drying garlic braids and weathered garden furniture gave the back of the plot an unforced domesticity. Seating was shared: banquettes along the walls, and simple wood and straw stools around the slabs. A table of two sat as easily in it as a table of eight, and so did a long night.
