Whatever you're planning to do on your villa holiday; if you take a break in Corfu, then one thing's for sure – food will play a very large part in your holiday experience. Food isn't just about sustenance and nutrition: food can also evoke many memories and remind you just how much you enjoyed your time on the island. That's the beauty of villa holidays: you're free to come and go as you please and eat as and when you want to. You're not tied by specific hotel meal times. When you visit Corfu, you'll be able to eat out at the wide variety of bars and tavernas whenever the mood takes you, or pick up a few local specialities and cook them at leisure when you're back by the side of the pool. Mix that with sun, plenty of good food and oodles of the local white wine Retsina, and you've got the recipe for the perfect holiday. Who wouldn't like that?
There are many native culinary dishes available in Corfu, as well as the more generic sort of foods we now tend to associate with Greek cuisine, like souvlkia, lemon and herb grilled kebabs, melitzanososalta, grilled aubergines and herbs, choritik salata, or Greek salad to you and me, mousak, an aubergine and potato bake, Keftdes, meat patties with herbs, taramosalta, pureed salted mullet roe and klftiko, which is slow-baked goat or lamb. All of these traditional dishes are delicious. Even when you're back in wet and windy England, one taste of any of these dishes will have the memories flooding back.
As you would expect on any island, fish is in abundance. Corfu is no exception and is able to boast some of the finest seafood on any of the Ionian Islands. You can choose from oysters (stredia), sea urchins (achino), lobster ( astaks), white bait ( mardes), crab (kvouras), sardines (sardlles) and of course glorious sea bass( lavrki). These are only a few of the many fish dishes on offer. If you fancy something else, or perhaps something a little more exotic, then all you need to do is ask, and the taverna will either rustle you up something special or tell you where you might be able to find the dish of your dreams.
When staying in your Corfu holiday villa you will notice that Corfu has its own speciality dishes that are rarely found on any of the other Ionian Islands. Pasta features quite heavily in the island's food, thanks in the main to the strong influence brought to the Corfu cuisine following the Venetian occupation. Pasttsio is one of these specialities: it's a pie made with layers of meat, macaroni and tomatoes, covered with a bchamel sauce and smothered in grated cheese. If you've never tried this before, then you really should as it's absolutely delicious. You'll also be able to find the island's own version of Sofrito, stew made of meat and tomatoes with an infusion of olive oil and wine vinegar, and glyk, which is a dish made of fruits preserved in a heavy honey-based syrup, served with pistachio nuts, morello cherries and oranges on sweet bread .