An Anniversary the Aegean Remembers

Anniversaries collect restaurants — the good ones, the loud ones, the ones someone else chose. This is the other kind of evening. The terrace closes, one table is set with white cloths at the caldera's edge, and for the length of your rental the view, the music and the pace of the courses answer to nobody but you. It is the difference between being given a good table and being given the place.

Some couples come back to the island that married them; others simply pick the anniversary the marriage has been building to — the tenth, the twenty-fifth, the year the kids finally left home. The terrace does not ask which it is. It sets the candles either way.

An anniversary dinner scales without changing character. For two, it is the quietest table on the caldera. For a milestone with family, the same long table hosts up to 30 — children, grandchildren, the friends who witnessed the original vows — with the terrace still exclusively yours and the kitchen building the menu around every dietary need. Welcome drinks and an open-bar hour come from the drinks packages; the food from the meal packages or à la carte on the night.