Restaurants, hotels, bars and wineries in Heraklion from the En Primeur Club guide.
Accolades in Heraklion
These rooms sit on the coast or in resort settings, where tasting menus, buffets, and wine lists shape the meal.
In Agia Pelagia, Caléa by Gerardo Metta is a restaurant for modern Mediterranean-Italian fine dining, with a tasting menu and a wine list. It is set above the Cretan Sea and brings coastal produce, island agriculture, and seasonal vegetables into the frame.
Anasa Restaurant sits in the beachside end of Heraklion dining as the signature restaurant of Pnoé Breathing Life. It serves modern Mediterranean resort cooking in à la carte and buffet formats, with a wine list and craft cocktails in a polished, design-led setting.
In Kato Gouves, Amirandes The Restaurant is the main buffet restaurant at Amirandes Grecotel Boutique Resort. It combines buffet and à la carte service with a standard wine program and craft cocktails, and the lagoon-side setting shapes the room.
This section gathers the places that define Heraklion’s local cooking, from heritage recipes to harbour fish and gluten-free grills.
Peskesi in Heraklion center is an Authentic Cretan Cuisine restaurant with an extensive wine list. It revives heirloom cooking with heritage breeds, aged cheeses, and forgotten grain varieties sourced from small Cretan producers, and it serves both à la carte and small plates.
Kotonostimié in city center is a traditional Greek grill with gluten-free specialties, served à la carte. The restaurant is known for pioneering gluten-free gyros in special flatbread, and it draws on the culinary traditions of Crete.
At Heraklion Port, Kastella Seafood Restaurant is a Greek seafood taverna with a wine list and à la carte service. It serves freshly caught fish filleted tableside, with a waterfront setting on the harbour edge.
Agia Pelagia and Kato Gouves are the strongest neighbourhoods in our guide. Agia Pelagia has 5 venues and Kato Gouves has 4, while Heraklion center, Heraklion Port, and the city streets add the Cretan-core restaurants and seafood rooms that shape the rest of the scene.
Heraklion has no Michelin-starred restaurants in our guide. Caléa by Gerardo Metta in Agia Pelagia serves a tasting menu of modern Mediterranean-Italian cooking with a wine list. Peskesi in Heraklion center serves Cretan cuisine with an extensive wine list.
Agia Pelagia is the clearest place to start for a tasting menu. Caléa by Gerardo Metta in Agia Pelagia offers a tasting menu and a wine list, and it is the main venue in our guide with that format.
Peskesi in Heraklion center has an extensive wine list, Anasa Restaurant has an extensive wine list, and Amirandes The Restaurant in Kato Gouves has an extensive wine list. Caléa by Gerardo Metta in Agia Pelagia has a wine list. Blue Monkey in Amirandes Resort, Heraklion serves natural wine alongside Asian fusion cooking.
By Emmett Haley · Updated October 8, 2026 · Editorial standards
Heraklion
Selected entries from the current guide for Heraklion.
Heraklion, Greece
Amirandes The Restaurant is the lagoon-side main restaurant at Amirandes in Gouves, placing resort dining inside Crete’s ingredient-led tradition rather than treating it as a generic hotel meal. The draw is the setting: an ornamental lagoon, open-air resort rhythm, and a Cretan context where olive oil, herbs, seafood, vegetables, and dairy carry more weight than culinary theatrics.
Heraklion, Greece
Anasa Restaurant belongs to the beachside end of Heraklion dining, where proximity to the water matters as much as formal culinary labeling. Its Karteros setting makes it better read through Crete’s ingredient culture: seafood, vegetables, olive oil, and the island habit of letting sourcing carry the meal rather than technique alone.
Heraklion, Greece
Blue Monkey sits in Gouves, east of Heraklion, in a part of Crete where resort dining, family tavernas, and coastal restaurants overlap. With no public awards, chef details, or published price tier attached, it is better read through its setting than through trophy signals: a casual Heraklion-area choice shaped by the island’s mixed audience of residents, holidaymakers, and returning Greek families.
Heraklion, Greece
Caléa by Gerardo Metta fits the Heraklion dining conversation through a Cretan lens: coastal produce, island agriculture, and the sharper expectations now attached to resort-adjacent restaurants. The useful way to read it is not as a standalone address, but as part of a broader move toward ingredient-led cooking around Heraklion, where seafood, olive oil, herbs, and seasonal vegetables carry the argument.
Heraklion, Greece
Where the Cretan Coast Meets the Plate The stretch of Heraklion seafront along Leoforos Sofokli Venizelou carries a particular quality in the early evening: the light off the Aegean shifts from white to amber, fishing vessels sit low in the...
Heraklion, Greece
On a quiet street in central Heraklion, Kotonostimié draws on the deep culinary traditions of Crete rather than tourist-facing approximations of Greek food. The address on Monis Odigitrias places it within walking distance of the city's older residential quarters, where local dining culture operates on different terms than the harbour-front strip. For those reading Cretan cuisine seriously, it belongs on the shortlist alongside Peskesi and Kastella.
Heraklion, Greece
Peskesi occupies a restored Heraklion mansion and has become a reference point for Cretan heirloom cuisine, drawing on the island's pre-industrial food traditions rather than the taverna menu most visitors expect. The kitchen works with heritage breeds, aged cheeses, and forgotten grain varieties sourced from small Cretan producers. For anyone trying to understand what Cretan cooking looked like before mass tourism reshaped it, this is the address.
Heraklion, Greece
Swing Thing occupies a spot on Arkoleon Street in central Heraklion, placing it within walking distance of the city's older commercial quarter and its layered café and bar culture. Visitors exploring Heraklion's dining scene beyond the harbour-facing restaurants should consider it alongside the city's broader offering.
Heraklion
Selected entries from the current guide for Heraklion.
Heraklion, Greece
Positioned above the protected cove of Agia Pelagia on Crete's northern coast, Seaside A Lifestyle Resort trades on the island's deep tradition of grounded hospitality rather than generic resort spectacle. For visitors approaching from Heraklion, roughly 20 kilometres to the east, it offers a quieter coastal register than the city itself.
Heraklion, Greece
Positioned between a nature reserve and two sandy beaches on the northern coast of Crete, Amirandes draws on Minoan architectural language to shape a resort that reads more like a private water palace than a conventional hotel complex. Seven restaurants, beachfront villas with private pools, and a seafront Olympic pool place it at the upper end of the Heraklion luxury market, with year-round programming that extends well beyond the peak summer window.
Heraklion, Greece
Autograph Collection sits within Marriott's independent-spirit tier, a positioning that places it among Heraklion's more characterful hotel options rather than its generic resort corridor. As a brand, Autograph properties are selected for architectural or cultural distinctiveness, making the Heraklion address a point of interest for travellers moving between Crete's northern coast and the city's Minoan heritage sites. Booking details are best confirmed directly through Marriott's reservation platform.
Heraklion, Greece
ÉRA Hotel Heraklion belongs to the city-hotel side of Crete rather than the resort circuit, which makes its design and atmosphere the point of interest.
Heraklion, Greece
Rocca a Mare Heraklion - Handwritten Collection sits in a city where hotel dining is shaped by port traffic, Cretan produce, and short-stay cultural itineraries. Published details for the property are limited, so the useful reading is comparative: place it against Heraklion’s resort-led hotels, city stays, restaurants, bars, wineries, and coastal peers before making plans.
Heraklion, Greece
The Tenant occupies a considered position within Heraklion's emerging hospitality scene, where the physical identity of a space increasingly shapes how guests read the rest of the experience. See our full Heraklion guide for broader context.
Heraklion
Selected entries from the current guide for Heraklion.
Heraklion, Greece
Aeri Pool Bar fits Heraklion’s beachside drinking circuit rather than its late-night cocktail-room lane. The appeal is the Karteros setting: pool-bar ease, coastal pacing, and a drinks format that works better as a relaxed stop than a destination for documented awards or chef-led ceremony.
Heraklion
Selected entries from the current guide for Heraklion.
Heraklion, Greece
Boutari Wineries Crete gives Heraklion’s wine country a polished estate format: vineyard setting, cellar and production-area tours, and tastings built around Cretan varieties. The stronger editorial reason to go is terroir education, with Archanes PDO, Skalani, Fantaxometocho and the Boutari group history giving context to Vidiano, Kotsifali, Mandilari, Vilana and Malvasia di Candia.
Heraklion, Greece
The address situates it in the agricultural interior of the Heraklion regional unit, where the elevation and soil profiles that define serious Cretan viticulture are most concentrated.
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