A table loaded with colours catches the eye immediately as we enter the neat garden. Deep red sweet tomatoes and cherry tomatoes; every shade of green vegetables and leafy greens, beans, courgettes, okra, peppers, avocadoes; a dash of yellow from the courgette flowers; purple aubergines. Goods from the meadow. A whole garden spread on the table, ready to compose the most inspired Cretan dishes.
The area is Mikro Livadi and it’s around 150 metres inland from the beach of Episkopi. Malamatenia Tzimpoukakis, neé Kaloterakis, the cook and hostess, spreads her arms and shows us around, explaining how they grow watermelons, melons and also pistachios. The ground is so fertile that nothing can stop growing once it’s been planted.
Malamatenia cooks real Cretan cuisine, carefully selecting the ingredients she uses, making sure she always chooses seasonal products, organic when she can find them, and of course everything she and her husband, Aetos Tzimpoukakis, have planted in their small vegetable garden behind the restaurant. Since 2000, she, Aetos, and their daughters, Anastasia and Angeliki, as well as Mahmud, a Syrian immigrant and invaluable help and now part of the family, prepare and offer their customers the things they too enjoy. “Mikro Livadi” is open all year long and has many customers in the winter months also.
At “Mikro Livadi” the variety available makes choosing difficult. Omelette withblack bryonies and asparagus, courgette flowers both plain and stuffed with cheese, a selection of fish and meat dishes, and also a one-of-a-kind moussaka, with saffron, so smooth it feels like baby food.
The mini greens pies are also an experience in themselves. Cooked on the grill instead of being fried, these crunchy bites stuffed with hartwort, Venus comb, water parsley, and also fennel and other wild greens, are only left over the fire that Aetos has carefully prepared in the kitchen, for a few minutes before being served to and becoming a highlight for the expectant guests that have already had a drink of bottled tsikoudia (a fragrant, grape-based pomace brandy with high alcohol content, produced in Crete).
The welcome treats are generous: large olives, graviera and anthotyros cheese, together with carob or organic oat rusks, along with olive oil and coarse salt.
Later the traditional boureki from Chania is going to the take the lead (homemade filo dough, potato, courgette and myzithra cheese), the traditional rosemary escargots, the artichokes in vinegar, chicken raised by the owners, served with pilau rice, stuffed tomatoes and chicken with okra.
More info: 28310 61300, 6977210097
