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

The designation matters because the name travels loosely. Fava is served across Greece; Fava Santorinis is a PDO tied to this island's crop, and a taverna using the full name is making a legal claim rather than a loose one. The dish arrives as a warm, thick purée, usually dressed with olive oil, onion and capers, and it is a starter rather than a side.

The island's other signature crop is the cherry tomato, and it ends up in tomatokeftedes — fritters of grated tomato bound with flour and herbs and fried. The white eggplant, paler and less bitter than the common variety, appears grilled or stewed. All three crops share the same explanation: Santorini's soil is volcanic, water is scarce, and the plants that thrive are the ones that concentrate flavor rather than bulk.

Greece's national register of protected products sits with its Ministry of Rural Development and Food, which publishes it as a set of product-category registers — olive oil and olives, cheeses, fruit, vegetables, nuts and pulses, bakery and confectionery, fresh fish and seafood, other animal products, natural gums and resins, essential oils, and other products. Santorini's entries fall under the pulses and the vegetables, which is a fair summary of what the island actually grows.

For wine, the island's dry whites are built on Assyrtiko, a high-acid grape grown in low basket-trained vines, and Vinsanto is the sweet style made from sun-dried grapes. Both are poured widely across the island's wineries and tavernas.

The hill villages are where the food is least adapted to visitors. Pyrgos, which also holds the Collection of Icons and Ecclesiastical Relics — €5 full, €3 reduced, with a Thursday opening at 11:00 rather than the 09:30 of its other days — sits inland and uphill from the caldera rim, and its kitchens cook for a village rather than for a sunset crowd. Pairing the collection with a long lunch there is the cheapest good day on the island.

• Starter — Fava Santorinis first; the PDO version is the one worth paying attention to on a menu.
• Main — Tomatokeftedes and white eggplant are the island's two other volcanic-soil specialties, and both are vegetarian by default.
• With it — Assyrtiko for the dry whites, Vinsanto for the sweet sun-dried style, both from the same basket-trained vines.

Santorini's food is seasonal in a real sense: the island's crops are rain-fed and harvested in a narrow window, so the freshest versions of the tomato and eggplant dishes belong to summer rather than to a winter visit. Protected status also does not mean every menu honors it — fava without the Santorinis qualifier is a different product, legally and agriculturally. And the Pyrgos collection, like several small island sites, has closed outside its published hours, so a day built around it should have a second plan.

The Santorini when-to-visit question in this group sets out the seasonal site calendar that determines which months put the island's archaeology and its harvest in the same week.