Thessaloniki Food Tours
Thessaloniki is Greece’s food capital, an Anatolian and Jewish port city where breakfast is bougatsa and koulouri, the Modiano and Kapani markets roar all day, and the evening is spent over tsipouro and endless small plates. This is our Thessaloniki food hub. Below are the top-rated food experiences, then our notes.
Top-rated food experiences in Thessaloniki
Tsipouro evenings and Naoussa wine trips
Why Thessaloniki for food? Because it is widely held to be the best-eating city in Greece — richer and more Eastern than Athens, with two great markets, a deep meze-and-tsipouro culture, and the Xinomavro wine country of Naoussa on its doorstep.
Formats: food tours of the Modiano and Kapani markets and the old town with tastings; tsipouro-and-meze evenings; sweet and bougatsa crawls; day trips to the Naoussa and Goumenissa wineries.
What to eat: bougatsa, koulouri Thessalonikis, soutzoukakia, mydia (mussels) saganaki, gyros, trigona cream horns, and tsipouro or ouzo with meze.
The markets and the morning
Thessaloniki wakes to bougatsa — filo filled with semolina custard or cheese, cut with scissors — and the sesame-crusted koulouri, denser and better than Athens’s. The day belongs to two markets a street apart, the covered Modiano and the open Kapani, full of fish, olives, cheese and spices that speak of the city’s Ottoman and Sephardic past. A food tour threads the markets, the bakeries and the meze bars, and it is the most rewarding food walk in Greece.
The Eastern table
The city’s food carries the memory of Constantinople and the Jewish and refugee cultures that shaped it: soutzoukakia, spiced meatballs in tomato; mussels done a dozen ways, saganaki and pilaf; smoked and cured fish; and, for the sweet tooth, the cream-filled trigona panoramatos. The evening ritual is the tsipouradiko — small plates arriving with each round of tsipouro — and it runs late.
Wine, and how to do it
Thessaloniki is the gateway to northern Greece’s great red, Xinomavro, grown an hour west around Naoussa and Goumenissa — structured, age-worthy, and often compared to Barolo; day trips visit the wineries. In the city, food tours run three to four hours, market to meze; a morning tour sets up the rest of your eating. See the Greece hub for the wider country.
Frequently asked questions
Is Thessaloniki really Greece’s best food city?
Many Greeks think so; it is richer and more Eastern than Athens, with two historic markets, a famous meze-and-tsipouro culture and its own sweet and savoury specialities.
What should I eat in Thessaloniki?
Bougatsa and koulouri for breakfast, soutzoukakia and mussels for meze, and a trigona cream horn — all over tsipouro. A food tour covers them.
Can I do a wine trip from Thessaloniki?
Yes; the Xinomavro wineries of Naoussa and Goumenissa are about an hour west, and day trips visit them with tastings.
Read next: Xinomavro & Naoussa: northern Greece’s “Greek Barolo”
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.