“Culture is not something you can try to control or continue. Culture continues on its own. It is a living organism. It moves and goes on its own path, as far as it goes.” Stavros Fokou smiles. This is the closest thing their family has to a philosophy for their restaurant. Their goal, he adds, is not to freeze Cypriot cuisine. It is to feed the version of it that will continue to grow into the future.
Follow THE FUTURE on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, X and Telegram
To Patrikon is a modern, family-run Cypriot restaurant in the village of Tersefanou, Larnaca, run by siblings Stavros, Kiriakos, and Evanthia Fokou, alongside their parents.
Founded 14 years ago, it has evolved from a small courtyard souvlatzidiko into one of the most ambitious kitchens on the island, running seasonal tasting menus created with Cypriot ingredients and techniques.
Their story begins as most stories do: with the main character’s name. The name “Patrikon” translates to “the ancestral home,” which is where the restaurant began: in the courtyard of the family’s actual house in Tersefanou. The family opened a small souvlatzidiko there because that was the only space they had. Slowly, the souvlaki spot transformed into a taverna with a contemporary twist, with one of the brothers, Kiriakos, acting as the main chef.
Word began to spread. People from all cities (and even from abroad) would come to eat in a village most people on the island had never heard of. As their popularity grew, the restaurant would fill up week after week; but moving to a city was never up for debate in the family.
“Because we are in a village, we have access to the raw materials we want. Quality raw materials since we are surrounded by fields. We do our own foraging, and we are close to people who make things themselves,”
Stavros says.
But it’s not just being so close to the source of their ingredients.
There is a slight surreal quality, he says, in driving to a village and finding a fine version of Cypriot cuisine waiting for you. That surreal quality is part of the experience of To Patrikon.
The kitchen is a family kitchen in every sense. Kiriakos is the head chef, but his mother, father, brother, and sister are all involved, and the ideas for the taste menus come from everyone.
“It is a family business, To Patrikon. We are all in the kitchen. I usually take responsibility for the cooking, but because my mother, my father, my brother and my sister are here, we combine everything together, and they share all their ideas, and we come up with different recipes,”
says Kiriakos Fokou.
The restaurant business seems to be in the family genes. The siblings’ father ran restaurants. Their maternal grandmother had restaurants in England. Their paternal grandfather ran a grill. Their grandfather’s brother was the founder of the Higher Hotel Institute of Cyprus. There were even fish and chip shops in England and a tavern in Nicosia. “It was somewhat inevitable,” Kiriakos says of his own path into cooking. He walked into the kitchen at 12, watched in awe as a night of real service happened, and knew that was what he was going to do. He worked through internships in various hotels until 21, when the family opened To Patrikon. He has been in that kitchen for 14 years since.
“Food is our common language. It is the language through which we can express everything we feel. It is an art that you can consume, which is easier to consume than the other arts. So you can pass your own messages through the cuisine of the place,”
Kiriakos says.
At To Patrikon, everything is designed for a buffet of sensual experiences, which is why the menu is a seasonal set tasting rather than à la carte. “The most important thing is the experience and the memory they can take home with them,” says Stavros. “Something they can remember, and that makes them want to come back.” This is not a mass-market restaurant. It is, in Stavros’s own words, for anyone who wants to try Cyprus, or, at least, the Cyprus the Fokous want to deliver into the future.
Beneath all of this runs a larger ambition. To Patrikon is trying to become a platform for the work of Cypriot producers who almost no one outside a small circle knows exists. “One of the difficult and great ambitions of the restaurant is for the restaurant to express the work of many producers in Cyprus,” Stavros says. That means hours of research and development, finding people across the island who specialise in one thing: wine, olive oil, carob honey, distillates from specific Cypriot fruits, trachana. The goal is to give each of them a place on a menu, a physical expression in one of the country’s most attentive kitchens. “The land is the person,” Stavros says, quoting Cypriot poet Kostas Monti. In other words, elevate Cypriot cuisine, and you elevate the people who make each dish possible.
The restaurant is open only on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and on Thursday for special events. Every three months for 13 years, the tasting menu has changed. They are, by Stavros’s own count, on menu number 76. “The biggest challenge of the restaurant, generally, is that every menu has to be tasty and better than the previous one,” he adds. Sometimes the ideas come easily. Sometimes they have to look back at what they did years ago to find inspiration. But they refuse to commit to the old; they are committed to growing and evolving.
“If we had not changed the menu, we would not have moved from a small souvlaki spot to a modern Cypriot restaurant doing modern Cypriot cuisine.”
The pressure to reinvent is what made the reinvention possible.
Culture, as Stavros mentioned at the start, will continue on its own regardless. The Fokou family’s job is just to feed it well while it does.
Stavros and Kiriakos Fokou are the first guests on The Future Makers: The Business of Kitchen. The full episode, in Greek with English subtitles, includes the family’s reflections on running a fine-dining restaurant in a village, why they refused to move to a city, and what it means to be the food curators for Larnaca 2030. Available to watch now.
The Future Makers Podcast: The Business of Kitchen is a series of in-depth conversations with the people building the food industry from the inside: chefs, restaurateurs, hospitality leaders, and the producers and thinkers reshaping how a country eats. Host Annetta Benzar looks past the plates to understand the business behind the food.
A production of The Future Media.
