THE TABLE
Tantris: Fifty Five Years in the Same Building
Open since 1971 and never moved, in the purpose built house it opened in. Munich has rebuilt itself around Johann-Fichte-Strasse 7. The address has not changed once.
Read the review →Ettore Botrini brought a refined hand to Cretan cooking, on the water in Chania's Venetian harbour. Dakos, beef tartare and smoked eel, raised to fine dining without losing the island.
The kitchen
AlmyVita is the Chania restaurant of Ettore Botrini, a Greek-Italian chef known for his Michelin-starred cooking in Athens and on Corfu. Here the material is Cretan: the island's produce, herbs, oil and fish, handled with technique rather than nostalgia. Dakos, beef tartare and smoked eel are the dishes reviewers return for.
The room
The restaurant moved in 2024 into the heart of the old town, on the Venetian harbour with the lighthouse in view. The setting is historic and the service unhurried, the kind of room that carries a long dinner without pushing it along.
The proposition
Crete rewards those who eat where the island actually cooks. AlmyVita is that, with a serious kitchen behind it: local raw material, refined method, and an evening worth planning around rather than stumbling into.
At a glance
- Cuisine
- Refined Cretan, by Ettore Botrini
- Setting
- Old Venetian Harbour, Chania
- Signature
- Dakos, beef tartare, smoked eel
- Standing
- 4.5 on Tripadvisor across 200-plus reviews
- Best time
- Dinner, harbourside, at dusk
- Booking
- Reserve ahead in season
The TGC view
AlmyVita is our table in western Crete for the island's cooking at its best rather than a harbour tourist menu. TGC arranges the reservation and the evening around it.
Want us to arrange it?
We hold the relationships, the rooms and the access. Tell us the dates and we handle the rest.
Visit website ↗More Tables
Browse the Journal →THE TABLE
Broeding: No Menu, One Room, and an Austrian Wine List Sold by the Case Next Door
A Munich restaurant with no choice on the menu, a new set menu every night, and a wine shop attached. The wine list is built by people whose day job is selling the bottles, which changes what ends up in the glass.
Read the review →THE TABLE
Le Doyenné
Two Australian chefs left the Paris kitchens for the stables of a château thirty-six kilometres out, and cook almost entirely from a market garden that was already there. The garden is the restaurant, not its supplier.
Read the review →