Taverna Platanos, Naxos
There are meals you remember because of the food. Then there are meals you remember because everything simply came together at the right moment.
Taverna Platanos in the mountain village of Apeiranthos turned out to be one of those places for us.
When we arrived, the weather had other ideas. Rain quickly turned into a shower of hailstones and we found ourselves waiting inside the car as the storm battered the village. The moment the rain eased slightly, we made a dash to the restaurant and settled in for what became one of the longest and most enjoyable lunches of our Naxos trip.
Mountain village cuisine is unapologetically hearty. The Greek salad arrived fresh and vibrant with thick slabs of feta. The baked cheese was wonderfully comforting, rich and molten, exactly the sort of dish you want on a cold rainy afternoon.
The focus here, however, is clearly on meat.
We ordered lamb chops, pork chops and a tomahawk steak that arrived looking large enough to feed a small army. Looking around the dining room, I suspect some fellow diners were quietly amused by the amount of food appearing on our table. Thankfully, everything was cooked well. The lamb chops were juicy and flavourful, the pork chops simple but satisfying, while the tomahawk delivered plenty of beefy flavour and quickly became the centrepiece of lunch.
By the end of lunch, food coma had well and truly set in. A proper siesta at the table felt entirely justified. Dessert was next and, conveniently, the dessert shop we had planned to visit happened to be owned by the same family. Instead of moving elsewhere, desserts simply arrived at our table. It was also my first encounter with banoffee pie, which turned out to be a rather pleasant discovery.
Taverna Platanos is not a restaurant that tries to impress with modern techniques or fancy presentations. What it offers is generous portions, honest cooking, warm hospitality and a sense of place. On a cold and stormy afternoon high in the mountains of Naxos, that was exactly what we were looking for.
