Agriculture is quite pronounced for such a small island which strangely enough has quite a lot of land for grazing. The result of this is that the island’s meat dishes include local beef, lamb and goat. Naturally Kythnos being a Cycladic island there is a wide variety of seafood of which the most popular dish includes the local specialty stuffed kalamari (squid). As far as fish dishes are concerned, they are as fresh as can be and their prices are for the most part typical of the rest of the Cyclades. A good tip is that the locals prefer the smaller fish because of their more intense flavours, an advantage to this is that the prices are low compared to the larger fish. Grilled sardines, fried atherina, fried gavros (anchovies), grilled gopes (bogue), grilled kollios (makerel) and fried kalamaraki (squid). The larger or rarer catches such as barbounia (red mullet), Xifia (swrodfish) and koutsomoura (mullet) are naturally more expensive. Tsipoura (bream) is somewhere in the middle pricewise and exceptionally tasty.
Other island specialties are the traditional Easter cheese-pie (pittaro), and deep-fried cheese-balls (sfouggato). The island has its own production of capers, the cheese called copanisti (beaten) and baked chickpeas are usually a staple and are found on most menus of the island’s restaurants. It is customary since each of the restaurants are family owned businesses that each usually has its own specialty a family secret.
