Food, Glorious Food – Eating My Way Through Nafpaktos

Room With a View – Pepo’s Guesthouse

You will be spoiled for choice when looking for somewhere to stay in Nafpaktos. There are accommodation options to suit most budgets. There are guesthouses up in the kastro area and also close to the two beaches on either side of the town. After spending far more time deliberating where to stay than is good for me, I decided to stay right in the thick of it all at Pepo’s Guesthouse right next to the Venetian Harbour.

It sits in a small shaded square where you will find a couple of cafes and tavernas and is literally a few steps from the harbour wall. Once through the front door and up four steps, the reception area is beautifully decorated and is described on their website as ‘an elegant living room for waiting’. And luxury of all luxuries – there’s a lift which believe me is much appreciated.

Having booked just a few days earlier I hadn’t anticipated being allocated what I think is one of their best rooms – Fos meaning light. I was thrilled and decided there and then to extend my four day stay to six. One of the benefits of keeping your itinerary flexible and not booking everywhere in advance.

The view. What can I say.

The guesthouse also had another secret – a roof terrace with exceptional views of both the kastro and the Venetian Harbour which in my humble opinion, was best viewed as the sun begins to set.

The terrace sports comfortable outdoor sofas, tables, chairs and a bar which I assume operates during peak season. It was actually nice to have it all to myself and turned out to be the best seat in the house.

The hotel has a sister – a lovely boutique hotel one street back called Archontiko Pepo. Although Pepo’s Guesthouse is manned remotely from the boutique hotel, Margarita was always on hand if I needed her. Plus I was always greeted every day by the lovely Paola who looked after the rooms very well.

I highly recommend this for a stay in Nafpaktos – you won’t be disappointed.

Book Pepo’s Guesthouse here

The Beaches

Nafpaktos has two very different beaches either side of the harbour, and neither of them look like what you’d picture from the postcards. I’d say they are functional more than those turquoise waters you imagine in Greece.

Gribovo, to the west, gives direct views of the Rio-Antirrio bridge, heat haze permitting. It’s a pebble beach that is quieter at the end near to the harbour. It’s backed by a long line of café bars and lined with huge, centuries-old plane trees, one of the beach’s defining features, the trees coming right down to the shoreline and throwing good shade over the promenade, cafés and tavernas alike. It was Saturday when I first wandered up, the Greeks out in full force with friends and family, every taverna offering beach beds on the pebbles. I stopped by Aktion for breakfast – a nice avocado with scrambled eggs on toast.

Psani, on the other side of the harbour has slightly larger pebbles than Gribovo in parts and is more of a mixed bag. The first stretch in front of the Venetian Harbour isn’t organised and is almost entirely without shade. Walk five or ten minutes further and it becomes the same set-up as Gribovo, tavernas and café bars with enough seating between them to accommodate the entire population of Nafpaktos, each with its own run of sunbeds out front.

That same wind tunnel that I witness crossing from Rio to Antirrio by boat sweeps across the bay here too. As refreshing as it is, it does make the water a little choppy – and it was cold. We were absolutely spoilt by the warm waters of Zakynthos.

Six Nights

By the middle of my stay I was starting to think six nights in Nafpaktos might have been several too many. I’d run out of things to actively see and do. I’m not averse to just soaking up the atmosphere of a place but I hadn’t found that sweet spot where I could happily while away the hours.

After the castle and the harbour, the main occupation left is café culture, people-watching and the rest of it, not really my thing if I’m honest. Work kept pulling me back to the laptop more than I’d have liked, and underneath all of it there was still a tiredness I couldn’t quite shake, probably down to the high thirties temps and the humidity.

In hindsight, that was probably the point. Three days of having done everything worth doing left three more days with nothing to do but rest, catch up on work, and start thinking about where I would be heading next. It wasn’t a bad thing. Had I been staying somewhere a bit more basic I may have felt completely differently about it. Sitting in my room penning some notes about my travels whilst looking out at the view was productive rather than wasteful, so not a bad way to use the back half of the stay.

Worth knowing that really, because it explains something about the restaurants that follow. The first few made a real impression. By the last few, eating had become a sport that I seemed to excel in.

Restaurants

Nafpaktos is awash with restaurants, cafés and bars, and at times it was hard to choose where to eat. However, in the small square right outside Pepo’s there are three tavernas, two of which I dined at. Here tucked away behind the harbour, in the shade of a ancient plane tree, you are rewarded with a relaxing courtyard dining experience as opposed to being in the hubbub or the harbour crowd.

Captain Cook was my first foray into Nafpaktos dining. The restaurant offers an extensive modern Mediterranean menu with Greek and Asia Minor influences, a good selection of meat, seafood and pasta. The charming Alex was an excellent host who engaged with all his customers professionally and warmly. At one point he told me I was a very beautiful woman. You should have gone to Specsavers nearly rolled off my tongue, but I realised it would have been lost in translation. Instead I just said “Oh,” and let it hang there awkwardly. Fava with capers and Adana kebab, a Turkish dish with strong Asia Minor roots flavoured with sumac, on my first visit. Second time round, courgette fritters and a beetroot risotto with honey-glazed hazelnuts and goat’s cheese. The food here is a cut above the rest and I highly recommend it.

Next door to Captain Cook is Papoulis. Its tables are less formally arranged than its neighbour and although has the same basic infrastructure in the square it had more a traditional Greek taverna vibe. This was reflected in the menu too which was good standard Greek fayre including a selection of fish. It always seemed busy and one of the reasons is the price which was very competitive which may be one of the big draws. Service was swift and amenable staff.

Kouzina Loi is located on the other side with tables and chairs along the harbour wall as well as up a few steps on a small terrace of the restaurant building. The restaurant reputation precedes it. It is owned by Maria Loi, sometimes called the Julia Child of Greece. She also runs the award-winning Loi Estiatorio in Manhattan, has written more than thirty cookbooks, and fronted her own cooking series on American public television. This particular restaurant has been running since 2003.

The food was good and prices slightly higher than other places I’d dined at so far. The lamb shank wasn’t anything exceptional. I think I was expecting more from a restaurant with such a high reputation.

I did find the staff to be a little indifferent and lacking warmth, and engagement and aloof – just service delivered because it had to be. I was the only customer and there were three staff so it wasn’t down to being busy.

Cats in restaurants don’t really bother me but the cats who frequented Kouzina were there to use their facilities. They were half-heartedly shooed away by staff who then simply watched as one of them did its business in the planter right next to my table. I lost my appetite rather quickly after that. I left disappointed.

Perigiali is the sort of traditional Greek seaside taverna where you come for the fish, seafood and mezedes, with tables beneath the trees overlooking Psani Beach. I’d spent the morning laying on one of their five sunbeds in front so it seemed only right that I had lunch there. I’d intended to anyway and really like the beach towel to table dining experience anyway.

It was a nice and relaxed spot to spend the day. If you prefer to be in the thick of it, other tavernas have multiple rows of sunbeds stacked side by side with music playing so the options are there.

Byzantio one of the first beach restaurant bars along the main drag at Psani Beach is a good breakfast stop serving a good range of snacks and breakfast options. I did only visit for breakfast having an omelette and later, a stack of pancakes – not because I was hungry but just because I felt I had to justify my stay sitting at one of their tables overlooking the beach. By this stage in my 6 days stay, eating became a bit of a time filler.

On my final evening in Nafpaktos I decided to move away from the Venetian waterfront and head to Gribovo Beach. Zografos Taverna is one of the first along the stretch from the port and located under large sprawling plane trees. The beef in tomato sauce was very good and a generous portion.

The sunset view of the Rio Antirrio Bridge was quite something.

Flavours Creperie in the square behind the harbour was a nice place to visit for indulgent crepes and tea. Although I was rather sneering of the people watchers down by the harbour, it was a good place to watch the many wedding photo shoots taking place. Less pretentious than the bars along the harbour wall.

Nafpaktos is picture perfect. The kastro climbing the hillside above a Venetian harbour, plane trees throwing shade over café tables, terracotta rooftops catching the evening light, it’s the kind of view that looks staged, except no set designer built this, history did, Byzantine walls under Venetian bastions under Ottoman fountains, five hundred years stacked into every street you walk down. I loved discovering all of it, the kastro especially stands out as one of the more interesting castle complexes I’ve explored anywhere in Greece.

Beyond what I discovered in the kastro, a beautiful setting can only carry you so far. Outside of this I didn’t quite find the substance to make me want to linger the full six nights. The town proper, away from the harbour crowds and the café culture, had a lower-key, more authentic feel, and it’s where I actually felt most comfortable. Had I kept to my original four days, I suspect I’d have left wanting to come back for more. Instead, six nights in, I felt like I’d done it, and found myself looking forward to my next destination.