Halloumi, Souvla and the Meze That Feeds a Family for the Price of One Pizza

Halloumi is Cypriot. Not Greek, not Turkish, Cypriot, and the island will tell you so. It is a firm white cheese from sheep and goat milk that squeaks when you bite it and does not melt on a grill. Kids who refuse every other cheese eat grilled halloumi with a slice of watermelon on a hot afternoon. It is the first thing I order anywhere on the island.

Souvla is the Sunday dish. Big chunks of pork or lamb on a long skewer, cooked slowly over charcoal at the taverna and at every family gathering. It comes with pita, tzatziki and a village salad, and one order feeds two children.

Then there is the meze, and this is the move for a family. You order meze for the table and the food arrives in waves for two hours. Dips first, then halloumi and lountza, then grilled meats, then sheftalia sausages, then whatever the kitchen is proud of that night. Twenty small plates. Everybody finds five things they like. A meze for four at a village taverna costs less than a resort pizza night.

Sweet things

Loukoumades are doughnut balls in honey, served hot in a paper cup from a stand at the harbor. Cyprus delight, the soft jelly cubes dusted in sugar, comes in rose and pomegranate. Carob syrup on yogurt at breakfast is the local thing nobody expects to like and everybody does.

Frappe is the coffee. Instant coffee shaken with ice and milk. It is what everyone on every beach is drinking and it is better than it sounds. The kids get a Kean, a Cypriot fruit juice in a glass bottle, from any kiosk.

Eat at the tavernas one street back from the water. The price drops by a third and the food gets better.

Planning Cyprus with kids? Start with the full Cyprus family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.