While in Paphos, you must try the best Loukomia and the most delicious sugared almonds. Kali orexi - Bon appetit!

Just reading our Paphos restaurant guide will make you hungry! So after shopping for souvenirs in Paphos, relax in beautiful surroundings and taste a variety of dishes from the restaurant of your choice. You can also find out more information about food and cuisine in Cyprus as a whole.

Paphos Food & Cuisine

Lined with open-air cafes and tavernas that serve a tempting menu of the day's catch, Paphos offers a pleasant, casual lifestyle for tourists! Tavernas are dotted all around town, with 'meze' - which really means a mixture, being the main option. It consists of many dishes, all vying for space on your table, including delicious dips, moussaka, tavas, koupepia (stuffed vine leaves), etc, all accompanied by locally brewed Cyprus beer, or one of the island's excellent wines.

Paphos Sweets

While walking around Paphos you will come across many roadside stalls stocked with colourful boxes of mouth-watering sweets. Welcoming owners standing in doorways will invite you in to watch the sweet-making process. Making Cyprus Delights or loukoumi has been a part of life here since 1895. and families have been running the small factories for generations and guard their recipes very closely.

Loukoumi is made by a long drawn out process that needs practice and expertise. The method involves several steps. First, three huge water-filled cauldrons are placed over a hot fire. When the water boils, sugar is added and this mixture is boiled for another hour. The mixture is stirred continuously using an electric paddle. This is followed by adding starch, and the mixture is further boiled for five to six hours, till it becomes shiny and smooth.

After allowing it to cool for some time, different flavours are added to the mixture. Almond, cherry, chocolate, lemon, and rose are some of the flavours available from a long list of twenty-four. The traditional rose flavouring is made locally. Fragrant rose petals are boiled and the condensed vapours are collected. The flavoured mixture is now poured into huge wooden trays for setting.

It takes almost five hours to set and then the mixture is cut into squares, dusted generously with icing sugar and packed into small boxes lined with greaseproof paper. The sweet is now ready to be sold. The loukoumi made in Cyprus is of very high quality and does not contain gelatine. Orders for this delicious smooth-tasting sweet are received from appreciative clients from all over the world.

The little factories also make excellent sugar almonds. Unlike the soft almonds coated in bright pink, these almonds are grown locally, freshly roasted and covered with a creamy coloured sugar coating that melts in the mouth.

The almonds are first washed, roasted slowly and then put into a copper cauldron, which is rotating and being heated. Sugar syrup is used to baste the nuts. and once they are evenly coated with the syrup, the nuts are cooled slightly. The process is repeated a few times and then the nuts are cooled properly and boxed, and are ready to be sold. Both loukoumi and sugared almonds have a shelf life of about two months.