Crete Food Tours
Crete is the birthplace of the Mediterranean diet and Greece’s finest food island: olive oil poured on everything, dakos of barley rusk and tomato, wild greens and snails, graviera cheese, its own ancient wine grapes, and the raki that ends every meal. This is our Crete food hub. Below are the top-rated food experiences, then our cooking and wine pages.
Top-rated food experiences in Crete
Village, farm and olive-oil tastings
Why Crete for food? Because it is a genuine longevity diet you can eat on holiday — superb olive oil, vegetables and cheese, a deep village food culture, and native wines — across the markets of Chania and Heraklion.
Formats: food tours of Chania and Heraklion with market and taverna tastings; village and farm food experiences with olive-oil tasting; cooking classes and wine tours (see their own pages).
What to eat: dakos, Cretan olive oil, graviera and mizithra cheese, snails (chochlioi), gamopilafo, wild greens (horta), apaki, and raki (tsikoudia).
The Cretan diet
Crete gave its name to the studies that defined the Mediterranean diet, and the food is exactly that: a lot of olive oil (Crete makes some of the world’s best), vegetables and wild greens (horta), pulses, cheese and bread, with meat and fish as accents. The everyday dish is dakos — a barley rusk soaked and topped with grated tomato, mizithra cheese and oil — and it tells you everything about the place. Markets like the Chania municipal market and the streets of Heraklion are where a food tour starts.
The village table and raki
Cretan food is at its best in the mountain villages: graviera cheese from the highland flocks, snails (chochlioi bourbouristi) fried with rosemary, apaki smoked pork, gamopilafo the buttery wedding rice, and honey and walnuts for after. Every meal ends with raki (tsikoudia), the clear grape spirit poured freely as a gesture of hospitality — not a drink you buy so much as one you are given.
How to do it
Base in Chania for the prettiest old town and market or Heraklion for the biggest city and the wine country nearby; both have strong food tours. To cook the dishes, see our Crete cooking classes; for the native grapes, our Crete wine tours. Crete is good most of the year, mildest in spring and autumn.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Cretan diet?
The original Mediterranean diet — olive oil, vegetables and wild greens, pulses, cheese and bread, with modest meat and fish — linked to the island’s famous longevity.
What is the one dish to eat in Crete?
Dakos, the barley rusk with tomato, mizithra and olive oil; then graviera cheese, snails and anything cooked in the island’s oil.
What is raki / tsikoudia?
Crete’s clear grape spirit, distilled from the pomace after winemaking, served free at the end of a meal as a token of hospitality.
Read next: The Cretan diet: what to eat and where
How we choose
We list only experiences with a strong rating over a meaningful number of reviews and free cancellation where available, and we favour small-group and family-run hosts. FindEatLocal earns a commission when you book through GetYourGuide or Viator links on this page; it doesn’t change the price you pay. More about how we choose.