The Cycladic Gastronomy Festival in Sifnos

The Cycladic Gastronomy Festival — full name the “Nikolaos Tselementes” Cycladic Gastronomy Festival (Φεστιβάλ Κυκλαδικής Γαστρονομίας «Νικόλαος Τσελεμεντές») — is a three-day celebration of island food and culture held each September in Artemonas, Sifnos. It gathers cultural associations and cooks from across the Cyclades, plus one or more honoured guest regions from mainland Greece and occasionally abroad, each setting up a booth on the village square to cook and share the traditional dishes of their home.

The format is refreshingly un-commercial. This is not a ticketed food fair with vendors; it’s a community event run by the Cultural Association of Sifnos with support from the South Aegean Region and the Municipality of Sifnos, powered by well over a hundred local volunteers. Recipes are handed out on paper (in Greek, English and often a third language), tastings are offered freely from each booth, and the evening ends in music and dancing. It has become enough of an institution that in 2016 it won the Gold Award for “European Gastronomic Festival” from CEUCO, the European Council of Gastronomic and Oenological Brotherhoods.

The festival was first held in 2009, born from a simple idea: that Sifnos, with its outsized culinary reputation and its claim on the most famous name in Greek cooking, was the natural place to celebrate the food heritage of the whole island group. What began as a modest local gathering grew, edition by edition, into the biggest cultural event in the Cyclades. By its tenth year it was drawing more than 300 participating guests and cooks and over 100 volunteers; today it pulls visitors from across Greece and abroad.

Two things drove its creation. The first was preservation: island recipes live in the hands of older cooks, and a festival that asks each region to cook and write down its dishes is a way of recording them before they fade. The second was connection — a yearly meeting point where the scattered islands of the Aegean present themselves to one another through food, costume, music and craft. That combination of purpose (safeguard the recipes) and pleasure (a three-day village feast) is why it has lasted more than fifteen years and keeps growing.

To understand why the festival carries his name, you have to understand the man — and why Sifnos claims him so fiercely.

Nikolaos Tselementes (Νικόλαος Τσελεμεντές, 1878–1958) was born in Exambela (Εξάμπελα), a small village on Sifnos a short walk south of Artemonas. He grew up and finished school in Athens, worked briefly as a notary clerk, and drifted into cooking through his family’s restaurant. He studied for a year in Vienna, cooked for Greek embassies, managed the Hermes Hotel in Athens, and then spent roughly a decade working in some of the most expensive restaurant kitchens in the United States before returning to Greece in the early 1930s.

His real influence came through the page. In 1910 he launched a cooking magazine, Odigos Mageirikis (Cooking Guide), and later expanded it into what became the first complete Greek cookbook — a book so successful it was reprinted more than fifteen times over the following decades. In 1950 he published Greek Cookery, the first serious overview of Greek cuisine written in English. His name became, and remains, the Greek word for “cookbook”: to own a tselementes is to own a recipe book, and to call someone a tselementes is to say they can really cook.

He is also a genuinely debated figure, and an honest guide should say so. Heavily influenced by French technique, Tselementes reworked Greek cooking — introducing béchamel and giving us the layered, creamy versions of moussaka and pastitsio most people picture today. Admirers call him the father of modern Greek cuisine; critics argue he “Frenchified” and flattened older regional traditions. Both things are true, and that tension is part of what makes a festival in his birthplace so fitting: it celebrates his name while doing exactly what he didn’t always do — putting unpolished, deeply regional home cooking front and centre.

Tselementes is the headline, but the reputation runs deeper than one man. Sifnos has a genuine, living food culture built on what the island itself produces: thyme honey, wild greens and herbs, capers that grow out of the dry-stone walls, and the cheeses and meats of a small farming population. Crucially, it’s also a pottery island, and the two traditions are inseparable — the island’s signature dishes are defined by being cooked slowly in local clay pots.

The classics you’ll meet again and again:

• Revithada (ρεβιθάδα) — chickpeas slow-baked overnight in a clay tsoukali, traditionally in the residual heat of a wood oven, ready for Sunday lunch. See our revithada recipe.
• Mastelo (μαστέλο) — lamb or goat cooked in red wine and dill in a clay pot, the Easter dish above all others. See our mastelo recipe.
• Amygdalota (αμυγδαλωτά) — soft almond sweets, closely tied to Artemonas itself. See our amygdalota recipe.
• Melopita — honey pie made with fresh local cheese.
• Revithokeftedes — chickpea fritters, the island’s favourite meze.
• Local cheeses — manoura, xynomyzithra and the wine-aged gylomeni manoura. See our guides to manoura cheese and xynomyzithra.

That clay-pot-and-honey foundation is why the festival feels earned rather than invented. For the wider picture, our Sifnos food guide and Sifnos cuisine pages go deeper.

The heart of it all is the main square of Artemonas, where each participating island and guest region gets its own booth. Amateur and professional cooks — backed by their local cultural associations — prepare and hand out the dishes of their home island. You move from booth to booth, tasting cheeses and cured meats on rusks, dips, stews, and sweets, collecting the printed recipe cards as you go. Bring an appetite and pace yourself; people who eat a full dinner beforehand always regret it.

In some editions, mornings bring gastronomy demonstrations down by the water, where local associations show how a traditional recipe is made from fresh ingredients — often followed by a tasting and an impromptu, island-style celebration on the shore.

One of the most charming fixtures: the Mikroi Tselementedes (“Little Tselementedes”), children aged roughly 6 to 12, put on aprons and colourful chef’s hats and take part in cooking games and contests made for their age. If you’re travelling with kids, this alone can make the evening. Creative activities for children typically run in the early evening before the main programme.

Each day closes with live traditional music and dancing — songs from Sifnos and from the other participating islands, usually starting later in the evening. A recurring highlight is a mock traditional wedding that sets off from Exambela, Tselementes’s own village, blending the marriage customs of Sifnos with those of the honoured guest region. It’s theatre, procession and party at once. The wedding and the musical line-up change from year to year.

Around the food, a small market of local products lets you buy directly from island producers, and parallel cultural events fill nearby venues: folklore, photography and painting exhibitions, presentations of traditional costume, and demonstrations of island crafts such as pottery and basketry. Typical venues include the Artemonas Primary School, the Sifnos Cultural Center “Marianthi Simou,” the Prokos Foundation, and several church courtyards around Artemonas and Exambela.

While every region cooks its own specialities, the Sifnos booth (and the tavernas around you) is where to focus if the island’s own food is what you came for. Prioritise revithada and mastelo for the clay-pot tradition, revithokeftedes as the perfect standing-up snack, and amygdalota and melopita for something sweet. Wash it down with local wine or a shot of souma, the Cycladic spirit. If a dish grabs you, keep the recipe card — most are written to actually work at home.

Want to go from tasting to cooking? Several farms and tavernas run classes — see our guide to amygdalota baking in Apollonia and revithada Sunday lunch in Artemonas.

The roster is what keeps the festival fresh. In a typical year you’ll find booths from many of the Cyclades — names like Milos, Serifos, Kea, Syros, Andros, Mykonos, Santorini, Thirasia, Schinoussa and, of course, Sifnos — alongside one or more honoured guest regions invited from mainland Greece or overseas. Past editions have hosted delegations from Crete, Laconia, Andros, and further afield including France and Egypt, each bringing not just food but musicians, dancers and costumes.

The festival runs for three days in September, usually in the first half to the middle of the month, though the exact dates move each year. For reference:

The 2026 edition runs 17–19 September. As a rule of thumb for planning, block out that long weekend and book accommodation early; the festival is one of the busiest weekends of the Sifnos calendar. See our best time to visit Sifnos guide for the wider seasonal picture.

In and around Artemonas (Αρτεμώνας), the elegant village just north of the island capital, Apollonia. The main square is the hub; parallel events spread to nearby schools, cultural centres and church courtyards, with the traditional wedding beginning in neighbouring Exambela. Everything is within comfortable walking distance in the Apollonia–Artemonas area.

Entry is free, and so is the food — this is a community celebration, not a ticketed event. The festival typically opens to the public in the early evening, around 18:00–18:30, with music and dancing beginning later, around 21:30–22:00, and running late. Exact opening times and the daily schedule are published with each year’s programme.

Sifnos has no airport, so you arrive by ferry. Boats run from the port of Piraeus (Athens) to the Sifnos port of Kamares, with journey times from roughly two hours on a fast ferry to four-plus on a conventional one, plus connections from neighbouring islands like Milos, Serifos and Kimolos. September still has good frequency, but sailings thin out toward the end of the month — book ahead over the festival weekend. Full details in our Sifnos ferry guide and plan your Sifnos trip hub.

From Kamares, it’s about a 10–15 minute drive up to Apollonia and Artemonas. The island’s KTEL buses connect Kamares, Apollonia and Artemonas frequently in season and are the sane choice on festival nights, when the Apollonia–Artemonas area gets busy and parking is tight. If you’re staying in or near Apollonia you can simply walk — Artemonas is around 15–20 minutes on foot along the main road or the old paths. If you drive, expect to park on the approach roads and walk in; don’t count on a spot near the square.

Artemonas is gentler than Sifnos’s steeper villages — the square itself is relatively flat — but the surrounding lanes are marble-paved, occasionally stepped, and can be slippery and crowded in the evening. Visitors with reduced mobility are best served by arriving early, before the crowds build, and by using the bus to avoid the parking scramble.

The festival is an evening event, which leaves your days free — and September is arguably the finest month to be on Sifnos: warm sea, softer light, thinner crowds. A few pairings we’d make:

• Base yourself in Apollonia or Artemonas so you can walk to the festival. See where to stay in Apollonia and our where to stay in Sifnos guide.
• Spend a morning in Kastro, the medieval old capital, and walk down to Chrysopigi Monastery, the island’s landmark.
• Swim before the feast. The September sea is at its warmest — Vathi and Platis Gialos are easy afternoon choices.
• Walk to Exambela, Tselementes’s village and the starting point of the festival’s traditional wedding — a quiet counterpoint to the busy square.
• See where the clay pots come from with a visit to our pottery heritage guide, which closes the loop between the cooking you just tasted and the vessels it’s cooked in.
• Eat at the island’s tavernas the rest of the week — our Sifnos food guide has the tables worth booking.
• For the bigger picture on timing a September trip, see best time to visit Sifnos.