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Best food in Ayia Napa - The cooking techniques the best restaurants use for a truly Cypriot experience.

MAR 24, 2019

Discover the main cooking techniques and food that the best restaurants in Ayia Napa use and how it can affect the modern-day taste in Greek and Cypriot dishes.

The Cypriots are steeped in culture, having been derivatives of a community that spans nearly 3000 years. Therefore, they have created many ways of cooking that are now being used throughout the world, in their different forms. But what are the classic cooking techniques used in Cypriot cuisine and how does this give the best restaurant experience in Ayia Napa.

The Basics

The Cypriots and Greeks cook with a few basic rules in place. These typically define their food throughout.

Stay Fresh

The Cypriots believe in cooking fresh, whether it be from the sea or land or sky. They rarely use frozen goods and believe truly that the freshness of a meal matters

From Scratch

All Cypriots dishes are made from scratch with their core ingredients with further ingredients being added along the way at the right time. Very rarely can you find any form of store bough t sauce that would nearly match the taste and authenticity of the Cypriot method.

Keep It Simple

The majority of Cypriot and Greek dishes are made with a few core ingredients. This ensures the dish is never too complex for the palette to comprehend. This also ensure that only the tastes that are supposed to be tasted, are.

Keep It Slow

The majority of Greek Cypriot main meals are cooked with incredible patience. They are never rushed out to the plate. Even the grilled meats are cooked far enough from the coal so you get a slight char but with completely succulent meat. Their slow cooked sauce dishes, like Kleftiko and Stifado, are to die for, and only come with several hours of very slow cooking.

The Equipment

The best Cypriot restaurants in Ayia Napa will come equipped with a few of the traditional pieces of equipment which define the taste of the food.

The Clay Oven

The clay oven has been used in Greek cooking for many years and is thought to be derived from when the food had to be cooked with items found in the ground, such as clay. Many variants of this oven exist, like the tandoor, used for many Indian and Pakistani dishes. It is renowned for its ability to hold a consistent heat over many hours. This compliments the

Cypriot methods of cooking at low temperatures over long periods of time. In Cypriot restaurants the meat and sauce based dishes, such as Kleftiko and Stifado, would typically be cooked in these ovens.

The Souvla

Much like the Greek Souvlaki, the Souvla is a form of barbeque used typically for skewer grilling chicken, pork and lamb. The difference between the two is that the Souvlaki will cook smaller pieces of meat faster and the Souvla is design to cook larger pieces of meat more evenly.

The smokey taste of the Souvla is hard to beat and is certainly a top pick for the Cypriot foodie.

Large Pans

Although large pans seem like a common item to have in this list, the Cypriots use these for different reasons. Again, with the low and slow techniques of cooking they tend to use these pans to sear and flavor meat and then add them to the oven for the slow roast. Using such large pans ensures that the liquid doesn’t evaporate away yet reduces to the full rich flavours that a Cypriot meal should deliver.