Food & Drink

Graviera Cheese Festival, Anopoli

Sfakia's great August feast: graviera, boiled meat and pilafi at long communal tables in Anopoli, with live Cretan music till late.

On 15 August, up on the Anopoli plateau above Chora Sfakion, the village stages the Graviera Festival it has run since 1985, and it is Sfakia at full voice. Long tables groan with boiled Sfakian meat, pilafi, stew, the region's famous graviera, honey and wine, all shared communally, while lyra and laouto keep the dancing going into the night. It is free, generous and deeply traditional, one of the strongest surviving panigyria in Crete. The drive up through the mountains is half the experience.