To Tsipouro

To Tsipouro is a textbook example of the Greek mezedopoleio tradition — a simple establishment where eating is secondary to drinking, and the food exists in service of the spirit rather than the other way around. Located on Lombardou Street in Zakynthos Town, the bar and taverna has maintained an atmosphere essentially unchanged for decades: bare tables, plain walls, a chalk board of daily mezedes, and a bar dispensing glasses of local tsipouro, the unsweetened Greek pomace spirit that provides the evening's backbone. Tsipouro is traditionally drunk cold, without ice, in small measures, and each round typically arrives accompanied by a small complimentary plate of mezedes — grilled sardines, a cube of feta, a few olives — in keeping with the Greek custom of never drinking without eating. At To Tsipouro, the mezedes can also be ordered as proper dishes: saganaki (fried cheese), grilled sardines, a platter of local charcuterie, and stuffed peppers among the usual rotation. Prices are emphatically low. The clientele is predominantly local men of a certain generation, though younger Zakynthians and visitors curious about the real vernacular of Greek drinking culture are equally welcome. The atmosphere is convivial and noisy without being aggressive. This is not a restaurant in any conventional sense — it is a living piece of Zakynthian social culture, and its value lies precisely in that.