By Nan Mackenzie
Antonis and Anita are the type of couple who will make you feel utterly sloth like. They are blessed with seemingly boundless energy, coupled with an obvious passion for the business of running their tavern. Married to each other and the business, they have over the past three years worked exceedingly hard to make this village venue one of the stand out places to eat within this somewhat sleepy rural area of Paphos.
Open seven days a week for lunch and dinner (Sundays lunch only and Mondays evening only), this level of commitment and hours worked would surely have turned lesser folk into jabbering wrecks, but not this couple who seem extraordinarily happy to be doing what they are doing.
The key here is they are also ‘doing it very well indeed’, offering a meze that really makes the taste buds perk up – no mean feat.
So what does this place offer and why are foreigners packing it out on a daily basis? The answer is simple, they welcome people with a smile and remember folks’ names, they create real comfort food and are able to make even the simplest of snack dishes taste of something other than cardboard. The menu is, at first glance, a run through of every dish one would expect from a typical tourist establishment; everything from burgers to sandwiches. But the menu is deceptive as its clear from the selection served when we were lunching that the same level of care goes into your homemade burger as goes into creating one of their stand out dishes of Afelia – it’s genuine comfort food with something on the menu for every taste and age group.
For lunch we tucked into an array of delicious home-made dips, followed by an old fashioned local dish called Stradatsva, which is a perfect marriage of eggs, tomato and halloumi, juicy sweet little lamb chops, and probably the best sheftalia I have tasted in a very long time. My friends went for kebabs and voted them first class. I have a horror of being faced with dodgy chips, after experiencing a few Mc Cain frozen moments in tavernas – mercifully Letymbou do the real thing and they arrive at the table piping hot from the pan.
The other great plus is its setting; slap bang in the centre of the village offering a truly lovely and relaxing 20-minute drive from Paphos town. The other bonus is the five-minute drive down the road to Tsangarides winery. Visitors, who will have relished a morning sampling of Angelos Tsangarides wines in the village of Lemona, invariably feel a bit peckish afterwards, so they are directed up the road to the Letymbou Tavern, where they can once again fuel up on another glass or two of his fruit of the vine accompanied by a good and always filling lunch. Another plus is the large parking area at the rear of the tavern.
The essential X factor element which makes the Letymbou tavern such a success story is that they recognise their product and don’t try to gussy it up, which I and I am sure many hundreds of other lovers of Cypriot cuisine, thank them.
VITAL STATISTICS
SPECIALTY Cypriot, and European dishes
WHERE Letymbou tavern, take the Polis road turn at Tsada and straight on to Letymbou village, Paphos
CONTACT 26 642614, 97 612500, 99 945457
PRICE €6-16
