Best Restaurants for Solo Dining in Santorini: 2026 Guide

Greece's most quietly serious restaurant — terraced into the Pyrgos hillside, a 13-course Cycladic tasting, a single counter seat the kitchen will give you. Book it.

Selene opened in 1986 in Fira under chef-proprietor Georgios Hatzigiannakis and moved to its present site in Pyrgos, the island's medieval inland village, in 2010. The terrace is cut into the hillside below the Kasteli ruins, with a fifty-cover dining room, an open kitchen visible across two of the walls, and a single eight-seat bar counter overlooking the pass. The view runs west across the caldera to Akrotiri and the volcano; the inland location keeps it three or four degrees cooler than the cliff-side properties in Fira and Oia.

Hatzigiannakis writes a thirteen-course tasting menu (€155, with optional pairing of Santorini wines at €85) that is the most sustained argument for Cycladic cuisine being treated as a serious regional cooking — fava santorinis (yellow split-pea purée from local volcanic-ash-grown legumes); brandade of dried fish from the Sigalas family in Oia; chloro tyri (fresh goat's cheese from Anafi) with caper leaf and grapefruit; the signature lamb cooked over volcanic-ash coals with vlita greens. The wine list is unusually deep in Greek bottles — sommelier Yiannis Korovesis pours grower-Assyrtiko from Santorini, Naoussa Xinomavro, and dessert Vinsanto on the half-pour for solo diners without being asked.

Solo-dining logic: the eight-seat counter is the most useful single-cover format on the island — the kitchen interacts directly across the pass, the wine programme is paired with conversation rather than note-cards, and the room's geometry puts you in the middle of service rather than at its edge. Book the counter when reserving, not the dining room. Four to five weeks ahead in season; March and November are reachable inside a week.

Oia's most serious tasting menu — eight courses on a cliffside terrace facing the caldera, the rare cliff-side room a solo diner is genuinely welcomed at. Fly in for it once.

Lauda occupies the upper terrace of the Andronis Boutique Hotel in Oia, the cliff-edge village at the island's northern tip. The restaurant is the longest-operating fine-dining room in Oia — opened in 1955, taken over by Andronis Concept Wonders in 2010, refurbished in 2018 — and the terrace's twenty tables are cut directly into the cliff face, with the caldera 250 metres below and the volcano roughly two kilometres west across the water.

Chef Emmanouil Renieris writes an eight-course tasting (€175, with a Greek-wine pairing at €95) that has consistently been the most technically rigorous menu in Oia. Recent courses: a tartare of Aegean amberjack with capers and citrus; smoked aubergine with goat's milk yoghurt and burnt sesame; the signature suckling pig from Naxos cooked sous-vide then finished over coals, served with quince and Vinsanto reduction. The wine programme, run by sommelier Anastasios Avramos, leans into producers from Santorini's older vineyards (Sigalas, Hatzidakis, Domaine Sigalas).

Solo-dining logic: Oia's restaurants are mostly built around the sunset two-top, and most will quietly steer a solo diner toward the worst table. Lauda is the exception — the booking system specifies solo as a category, and the hotel concierge will put you at a single edge table at the southern end of the terrace, which is the best seat in the room and the one the staff will hold rather than fill with a couple. Five to six weeks ahead in season for sunset; one to two weeks in winter.

An Exo Gonia hillside taverna with a terrace facing the airport runway and the Aegean beyond — generous, unhurried, the right room for a long single dinner.

Metaxi Mas (literally between us) opened in 1996 in Exo Gonia, an inland village on the east-facing slope of the island, about ten minutes' drive from Kamari beach. The terrace seats sixty under a wisteria canopy, with views east across the airport runway and the Aegean — the island's east-side sunsets aren't dramatic, but the morning light makes Metaxi Mas's late-lunch service one of the better daytime tables on Santorini.

Chef Yiorgos Roussos runs a Cycladic-traditional menu with a small daily off-menu list scribbled on butcher paper at the door. The signatures: kakavia (Aegean fisherman's soup with whatever the morning's catch turned up, €18); grilled octopus with split-pea fava and capers (€16); a slow-cooked rabbit stew in red wine and tomato (€22, available October to March); the homemade spanakopita with chloro cheese (€8). The wine list runs to about forty Santorini bottles, with a clear bias toward Assyrtiko and Aidani; the by-the-glass programme is the better order at €8–€11.

Solo-dining logic: Metaxi Mas is the kind of taverna where the staff register a single diner as a returning guest by the second visit. The room is large enough that a solo table doesn't feel exposed; the menu is long enough that ordering for one across three small plates is easy; and the half-litre house carafe of Sigalas Assyrtiko (€18) is the right amount of wine for a single eater. Book one to two weeks ahead in season; walk-in possible most weeknights.

A working harbour-side fish restaurant in Vlychada — whatever the day boats brought, grilled simply, the freshest fish on Santorini.

To Psaraki (the little fish) sits on the harbour wall in Vlychada, the south-coast fishing port that supplies most of the island's restaurants. The room is forty covers across an indoor dining area and a terrace built on the harbour wall itself; the fishing boats unload thirty metres from the table. Chef-owner Yiannis Tsoukatos opened it in 2010 and still runs the kitchen most nights.

The format is straightforward: the day's catch is laid out on ice at the entrance — usually some combination of red mullet, John Dory, sea bream, scorpionfish, and squid — and you pick what looks best. Whole fish are grilled simply with olive oil, lemon, and oregano; smaller fish are fried and finished with sea salt. The signature is the psarokeftedes (fishcakes, €14) made from the morning's offcuts. Sides: fava santorinis, white-bean salad, samphire when in season. The wine list is short and well-edited; the Sigalas Assyrtiko by the glass (€8) is the order.

Solo-dining logic: Vlychada is the island's quieter southern coast — fewer cruise visitors, fewer photo stops — and a solo dinner here reads as someone who knows the island rather than someone passing through. The harbour-wall terrace tables are the order, and the bar counter inside (six seats) is the practical fallback for a single eater. Book one week ahead in season; walk-in usually works for late lunch (3pm).

Oia's most architecturally serious dining room — a vaulted 1800 captain's house, a wood-fire kitchen, the rare cliff-side restaurant with no view tax. Book it.

1800-Floga occupies the ground floor of a fully restored 1800 sea captain's house at the centre of Oia's main pedestrian street. The building — vaulted ceilings, original Theran-stone floors, a small enclosed courtyard at the back — was a working family residence until 2016 and was reopened in 2018 by chef Thanos Stasinos with the wood-fire kitchen as the room's structural centrepiece. Forty-two covers, two seatings a night, dinner only.

The cooking is modern Greek with a strong wood-fire focus. The menu rotates seasonally; spring 2026 highlights: a wood-roasted whole celeriac with bone-marrow butter and parsley (€26); the signature katsikaki (suckling goat) cooked over olive wood with smoked aubergine and pickled wild artichoke (€42); a dessert programme that takes Greek dairy seriously — Vinsanto-poached pear with Naxos graviera ice cream and walnut praline. The wine programme features fifty Santorini producers and is among the deeper Assyrtiko lists on the island.

Solo-dining logic: most of Oia's cliff-side restaurants charge a 30–40% premium for the caldera view; 1800-Floga is one of the very few high-end Oia rooms that doesn't, because the room itself is the spectacle. The four bar-counter seats facing the wood-fire pass are the right solo booking. Three weeks out for Friday and Saturday in season; one week mid-week.

An Oia raw bar and seafood small-plate room — a 16-seat counter, day-boat fish, the most usable solo-counter geometry on the island.

Botargo opened in 2021 on the back lane between Oia's main street and the cliff path, a quieter setback that the room's reputation has steadily filled. Chef Stavros Tountas runs a sixteen-seat raw bar along the south wall, ten more covers at high tables, and a small inner courtyard with two additional two-tops. The kitchen runs day-boat fish from Vlychada and Ammoudi, with most of the cooking happening across the open counter — wood smoke, a small charcoal grill, a curing fridge.

The menu is share-plate seafood with a strong cured-and-raw section. Signatures: house-cured bottarga (the restaurant's namesake, €18) on grilled sourdough with lemon zest; whole grilled red mullet with pickled samphire (€24); the oktapodi (octopus) charred over olive wood with fava santorinis and capers (€22); a dessert of yoghurt mousse with Vinsanto-soaked dried apricots. The wine list runs deeper Greek than the room suggests — sommelier Maria Kyriakidi pours the Hatzidakis Aidani by the glass at €11.

Solo-dining logic: the sixteen-seat raw-bar counter is structurally the closest thing on Santorini to a Tokyo kappo bar — single diners sit naturally, the kitchen is visible and conversational, and the share-plate format scales down to one without awkwardness. Order three to four plates plus a half-litre carafe of Aidani. Book two weeks out for counter seats; one week for the high tables.

A small Exo Gonia garden taverna with a wood oven and a half-dozen producers in walking distance — a long slow lunch for one.

Aroma Avlis is a converted family house on the back lane through Exo Gonia, opened in 2015 by Maria and Yiannis Roussos (no relation to Metaxi Mas's owner — Roussos is a common Santorini family name). The restaurant occupies a vine-shaded inner courtyard with eight tables and a small wood-fired oven against the back wall. Eight tables. Two seatings at lunch, one at dinner. Closed Mondays.

The cooking is village-Cycladic with the wood oven doing most of the structural work. The signatures: melitzanosalata (smoked aubergine with garlic and lemon, €9); a slow-baked moussaka in individual clay pots (€18, requires a 35-minute lead time); the wood-oven kontosouvli (slow-roasted pork shoulder, €22); a dessert of melopita (Cycladic honey pie with mizithra cheese). The wine list is the shortest on this list — eighteen bottles, mostly local — but the family-grown house Assyrtiko at €18 a litre is the order.

Solo-dining logic: Aroma Avlis is the lunch table for a solo traveller who's reading a book between hikes. The room is small enough that the staff register you immediately; the pace is genuinely unhurried (three hours at lunch is normal); and the price point allows the long meal that most cliff-side restaurants quietly discourage for single covers. Walk-in usually works for the 2:30pm lunch seating. Book ahead for dinner.