Where should I eat in Meteora, and which local food or drink is worth trying?

Meteora's villages cook for climbers and shepherds, not for ceremony: this is Thessaly's mountain edge, where the Pindus foothills meet the plain, and the tavernas of Kastraki (beneath the pillars) and Kalabaka (the town below) serve the inland Greek canon at its most generous. The center of the table is meat from the spit and the clay pot: kontosouvli — large cuts of pork skewered and turned slowly over coals, the mainland's answer to the island souvlaki — kokoretsi (offal wrapped in intestine, a festival food and a test of nerve), and slow stews of goat or rooster with hilopites, the little square egg pasta of the Greek countryside, in tomato and wine. Order the tavernas' own rhythm: a village salad with Thessaly's feta (the PDO cheese's heartland runs through this region), fried peppers, and the mountain greens (horta) with lemon.

The foraging is the distinction. The forests of Grevena and the Pindus — a short drive west — are among Greece's richest wild-mushroom grounds, and in season (autumn above all) the tavernas fill their menus with porcini and chanterelles: fried, grilled with garlic, or folded into hilopites and risotto-style trahana dishes; Grevena town holds a mushroom festival each summer honouring the trade. The cheeses follow the mountains too — smoked metsovone from Metsovo over the pass (PDO), kasseri, and the monks' own economy remembered in the monasteries' shops: honey from the pillars' thyme, spoon sweets, and the herb liqueurs and wines the houses sell at their gates.

The glass is Thessaly's. Across the plain rise the slopes of Mount Olympus and the PDO Rapsani vineyards — a blend of Xinomavro, Krassato and Stavroto grown at altitude on the mountain's foothills — whose structured reds are the region's serious wine and the natural partner for the spit roasts; local producers around Kalabaka pour simpler country wines, and tsipouro, the pomace spirit distilled across Thessaly and served in little carafes with meze, opens most local meals. Choose by setting: Kastraki's tavernas trade on the view — pillars above the terrace, best at dusk after the descent; Kalabaka's grill houses on the main street are where the town itself eats, faster and cheaper; and the cafés under the planes on Kalabaka's square run the morning (Greek coffee, bougatsa from the bakeries) before the climbs. After dinner, the monasteries' silhouette against the last light is the dessert course; the actual dessert is galaktoboureko at the zaharoplasteia, and the walk home is short.

A Kastraki terrace at dusk: the kontosouvli turning over charcoal at the kitchen's edge, a carafe of tsipouro sweating beside the olives, and the pillars going violet column by column.

Order the mushrooms out of the famous season. The region's kitchens dry and preserve the Pindus harvest — dried porcini reappear all winter in trahana soups and slow sauces — and the monasteries' own shops sell the mountains in jars: wild-herb honeys, mountain tea (sideritis, the ironwort gathered on the slopes) and preserved fruits. The sideritis is the sleeper souvenir: an iron-rich mountain infusion the shepherds drank for wounds and colds, sold in dried bundles at the monastery gates and the Kalabaka grocers, and almost impossible to find outside Greece. It travels; the kontosouvli does not.

• Eat after the descent — Monastery hours end mid-afternoon; the tavernas' real service starts at 7, so let the big meal close the day
• Autumn for mushrooms — The porcini menus are a September–November event; in spring, ask for the wild greens instead
• Kastraki at dusk, Kalabaka at lunch — The view tax in Kastraki is worth it at sunset; the town's grills win the midday

The monastery shops are this plan's weak link, because they keep the monasteries' own short day and shut with them in the early afternoon — the thyme honey, the spoon sweets and the mountain tea have to be bought before the descent, not after dinner. The mushroom menus are a window rather than a fixture: the wild porcini and chanterelles belong to roughly September through November, and a June table offers the dried version or the wild greens instead. Tsipouro arrives in carafes, and the roads between Kalabaka, Kastraki and the Rapsani slopes are mountain roads, so the wine evening needs a designated driver or a taxi. For visitors stitching Greece into a wider European trip, the Schengen allowance is the other limit to watch: 90 days of presence inside any 180-day period, across the area's 29 member countries.

Book the Kastraki terrace for the first evening, order kontosouvli and a Rapsani red, and pick up sideritis and thyme honey at a monastery shop on the way down.