Boats in the little harbour at Pollonia, Milos, with the houses across the water

Dining

One kitchen, one long table, whatever came off the boat

There is no menu to choose from. There is a menu, written at four in the afternoon, and it is what everybody eats.

Breakfast runs from eight until eleven on the terrace: yoghurt, the island's thyme honey, eggs from Pollonia, bread baked in the village at six. Coffee for as long as you want it.

Dinner is four courses at eight, at one table, for as many as are staying. Guests who would rather eat alone say so at breakfast and we lay a separate table at the end of the terrace. Nobody minds; about one table in five is a separate one.

Hands laying a blue-patterned plate on a wooden table

The kitchen

Eleni cooks, and has since the house opened

She is not a chef and would be annoyed to be called one. She cooked for a taverna in Adamas for nineteen years and came here because the hours are better and the shopping is more interesting.

The rule she works to: nothing on the table travelled further than Syros. It rules out a great many things, which is the point.

This week's menu

This week

Thursday, as it happened

A real week's dinner, written up the morning after. Yours will be different, because the boats will have been.

To start

Fava from Schinoussa, capers picked on the path to Plathiena, a little raw onion.

with ouzo

Then

Gouna — mackerel split, salted and dried two days in the sun, grilled over vine cuttings.

with assyrtiko

The main thing

Goat, cooked seven hours in a sealed pot with tomato and cinnamon. Potatoes from the garden.

with mandilaria

After

Watermelon and a hard white cheese, because in June there is nothing better and we have stopped pretending otherwise.

with raki, from Naxos

A long table laid outside under the trees

If the boats come back with nothing, dinner is whatever is in the garden and an apology. It has happened twice in six years.

Eleni, who cooks

Practical

The things people ask before they arrive

Allergies and diets

Tell us when you book and it is simply handled — the menu is written after we have read the list, not before. Vegetarian is easy here; vegan takes a day's notice.

Children

Eat at the same table, earlier if you would rather, and the kitchen will make them something plain without being asked twice.

Eating out

We keep no monopoly on you. Reception will book you a table in Pollonia or Klima and tell you which night not to.

Wine

The list is thirty-one bottles, all Greek, most from the Cyclades and Crete, and it exists mainly because guests asked for one. Dinner comes with a carafe of the house white, which is an assyrtiko from a cooperative on Paros and costs us more than it should.

The demijohns behind the bar are a red from Tyrnavos that a friend of the family sends down twice a year. It is not a serious wine. It is very good with the goat.