There are some restaurants you visit while travelling that stay with you long after you’ve left.
Not necessarily because they are the smartest, or the most expensive, but because everything just works. The setting, the food, the people, the wine. Omega3 on Sifnos is one of those places for me.
It is tiny, right on the beach, and has become something of an institution on the island. Getting a reservation isn’t particularly easy, which probably tells you something. But once you’re there, the atmosphere is wonderfully relaxed. No fuss, no feeling that you need to be anywhere else. Just the sea, good food and a wine list worth paying attention to.
The staff were incredibly knowledgeable, too, which always makes such a difference. You could tell they cared about what they were serving rather than simply knowing what was written on the menu.
And then there was the food.
We ordered fish collar, which is one of those parts of the fish that is often overlooked. I’m not sure why, because there is plenty of beautifully tender, meaty flesh around the collar and it was absolutely delicious.
It was one of those dishes where the quality of the ingredients really did the talking. Fresh fish, fantastic flavours and very little fuss.
Honestly, if Omega3 were in Shoreditch, there would be a queue outside the door.
Apparently Tom Hanks has been, too. Although I suspect the people who really know about good food have known about this place for quite some time.
For me, though, one of the best parts of the evening was spotting a wine from a winery I had visited.
Antara is a winery in Tinos, and I had visited during my time travelling around Greece. So when I saw Vaptistis 2023 on the wine list at Omega3, it felt like a lovely little connection between the places I had been visiting.
The wine was Sherif Fatman, a blend of Greek grapes with lovely, racy acidity. It had exactly the sort of freshness I wanted alongside the seafood, and I have to admit I was rather taken with the label too. It’s playful and a little bit different, which somehow feels right.
This is one of the things I love about travelling for wine.
You might set off thinking about the vineyards you want to visit, the grapes you want to taste or the producers you want to meet. Then somewhere along the way, a restaurant introduces you to a bottle, a dish or a combination of the two that you weren’t expecting.
And those are often the things you remember.
Greek wine is particularly exciting for this. There are so many indigenous grapes and blends to discover, and the wines often make perfect sense alongside the food of the islands. Fresh seafood, salty flavours, herbs, lemon, grilled vegetables. The natural acidity in so many Greek wines makes them incredibly easy to drink with food.
That evening at Omega3 was a perfect example.
A tiny restaurant, an incredible location, a plate of fish collar and a bottle from a winery I had visited earlier in my trip.
I would happily go back to Sifnos just for that combination.
And yes, I’d order the fish collar again.
Elizabeth Hawthornthwaite
