Kos is having a moment at the table. On this long, sun-kissed slip of the Dodecanese, dinner can still mean a blue-and-white taverna where the octopus dries on a line and the wine is poured from tin pitchers. But just down the beach, you’ll now find white-clothed rooms where chefs riff on local oregano, salt-scattered capers and the island’s peerless olive oil with cosmopolitan swagger.

Whether you crave just-hauled red mullet charred over vine wood or a deconstructed moussaka laced with cinnamon foam, the ingredients remain the island’s quiet stars – seafood pulled from the Aegean at dawn, tomatoes that taste of August, goat cheeses with a lemony snap. Prices stay disarmingly gentle, the views are reliably cinematic, and the emerging cadre of young chefs is giving tradition a sleek, sun-drenched reboot. In short: on Kos, dinner is both the oldest story in the book and the newest reservation worth chasing.

Read more at Travel.gr/en