It rains so rarely here, George explains, that most crops are dry-farmed from seeds that require little water. “With very nice produce, it’s difficult to make bad food,” he shrugs. Yet it has a weighty culinary reputation, even by the standards of its location the South Aegean region, encompassing the Cyclades and Dodecanese islands, has been named one of two European Regions of Gastronomy for 2019.įor George, who was born here on his grandfather’s farm in the 1950s and now runs cooking classes for locals and tourists, it comes down to tradition and ingredients. The island is just 9.3 miles long by 4.7 miles wide and has fewer than 3,000 residents.

The interior is warmed and scented by an oven fed with olive wood, and a long wooden table is set with starkly few ingredients: a bowl of chickpeas, a heap of small, pinkish onions, a glass of olive oil and two dried bay leaves.Īside from water and salt, this is all that goes into the stew - and it’s this simplicity that, in George’s opinion, makes Sifnian food so famously delicious. I follow a long, dusty driveway towards a low stone outbuilding, where owners George and Dina Narlis welcome me with hugs and tiny cups of robust Greek coffee. Preparations begin on Saturday afternoon when revithada, a traditional chickpea stew, is readied for the oven.Īt Narlis Farm, near Apollonia, on the island’s eastern side, the weekly ritual is just beginning. Sunday lunch is a two-day affair on Sifnos, a small, jagged triangle in Greece’s Western Cyclades. This article was adapted from National Geographic Traveller (UK).

Island thyme headache stick