Marathia — The Place Nobody Told You About

There is a reason Marathia doesn’t appear in guidebooks or on the usual recommendation lists: finding it requires a thirty-minute drive into the southwestern hills of Zakynthos on roads that most rental cars approach with suspicion, arriving at a village (Agalas) that has perhaps two hundred inhabitants, and then locating a taverna at the far end of the village with no visible signage and intermittent phone signal.

The reason people make this effort, once they’ve heard about it, is the wood-fired oven.

The Oven and the Food

Kyrios Giorgos Xenos has been running Marathia for over twenty years. He built the outdoor oven himself — a clay and stone construction at the side of the terrace that takes three hours to come to temperature and burns for most of the day on weekends. Everything that comes out of it carries that irreplaceable quality: the slight bitterness of wood smoke married to fat, the crust that only a sealed, radiant heat environment creates.

Wood-fired pork is the main event — a shoulder, slow-cooked for four hours with rosemary sprigs from the hillside behind the taverna, garlic, bay, and the local olive oil that Giorgos presses himself from the grove you can see from the table. The meat comes apart. The skin is crisp. The pan juices are poured over everything.

Wild rabbit stew — this depends on the hunting season and Giorgos’s nephew, who provides what he catches. When available, it’s braised in red wine with pearl onions and fresh thyme. Ask when you arrive.

Chickpea soup — a simple starter that’s been on the menu since the beginning: chickpeas simmered all morning with bay and a pour of olive oil. Eat it with the bread.

Potatoes — roasted in the oven with mountain herbs (sage, rosemary, thyme), olive oil, and lemon. This is a side dish and also the best potato you’ll eat in Greece.

The Setting

The terrace has five tables and looks southwest over the hills toward the coast. On a clear day — which in July is every day — you can see the sea. There’s no background music, no traffic noise, nothing except the occasional bird and the smell of the oven. After lunch, some people stay for an hour and do nothing in particular. Giorgos doesn’t hurry anyone.

Getting There

From Zakynthos Town, take the road south toward Keri and turn east toward Agalas. The road narrows considerably for the last few kilometres. A normal car manages it fine if driven carefully; a large SUV will be uncomfortable. There is parking at the edge of the village.

Lunch for two — shared starter, two mains, wine from the barrel — runs €20-30. The drive back takes longer than the drive there, because you won’t be in any hurry.