Restaurants in Kos Town

Kos Town packs most of the island's dining into a compact grid behind the harbour, which makes it the one place on Kos where you can reasonably decide what to eat after you have set out walking.

The waterfront carries the view and the crowds; the streets a block or two inland tend to carry the cooking locals actually queue for. Both are worth an evening.

The harbour front is where most visitors start. The setting is genuinely good — fishing boats, yachts and the castle floodlit behind them — but it is also the most competitive stretch of pavement on the island, and menus there are written to appeal to everyone.

Walk two or three streets inland and the character changes. The lanes of the Old Town and the squares around Konitsis and Eleftherias hold the ouzeri, mezedopolia and grill houses that fill with residents rather than holidaymakers, and prices drop noticeably along with the English-language signage.

Almost everything in the centre is within a fifteen-minute walk, so it is worth wandering before committing. A useful signal in any Greek town: look for tables of locals eating late, and for a short handwritten menu rather than a long laminated one with photographs.