There are some restaurants where you sit down and immediately know you’re going to be there for a while.
Pelicanos on Faros beach in Sifnos was one of those places for me.
It’s a new restaurant, and it has a little bit of an Ibiza feel about it. Stylish, right on the beach, cocktails, good music and a slightly more polished feel than some of the traditional island tavernas.
You’re on the beach, but you’re not actually sitting with your feet in the sand. It’s fancy, but not overly formal. More the sort of place where you can start with a negroni, order lunch and suddenly realise several hours have disappeared.
Which, to me, is exactly what you want from a Greek island.
We started with the negronis, naturally.
But the dish I’m still talking about is the sea bass.
Butterflied and cooked on the BBQ, it was quite honestly the best sea bass I’ve ever had.
There was something wonderfully simple about it. The fish was the star, beautifully cooked over the barbecue, with that lovely combination of smokiness and freshness you want when you’re eating seafood beside the sea.
It’s a good reminder that sometimes you don’t need to do very much to a really good ingredient.
The setting certainly helps.
Faros is one of those Sifnos beaches where the sea is right there in front of you, and at Pelicanos the whole restaurant is designed around that location. It feels like somewhere you could arrive for lunch and have absolutely no intention of leaving until much later.
There are plenty of seafood dishes on the menu, alongside more contemporary takes on Greek ingredients, and the drinks list means you’re well looked after whether you fancy a cocktail or a bottle of Greek wine.
And I think that’s what makes this sort of restaurant work.
It isn’t trying to be a traditional Greek taverna, and it isn’t trying to be a fine-dining restaurant either. It sits somewhere in between. A little bit glamorous, a little bit beach club, but still very much connected to the fact that you are sitting on a Greek island eating very good seafood.
The only thing I would say is: book.
This is not one to leave until the day before.
Pelicanos is already proving very popular, and reservations are apparently being made months in advance. So if Sifnos is on your travel list, I’d get this one in the diary early.
And when you get there?
Start with a negroni.
Order the sea bass.
Find a good Greek wine.
And settle in.
Because sometimes the best holiday lunches are the ones where you have absolutely nowhere else to be.
Elizabeth Hawthorthwaite x
