Mykonos will feed you very well and it will also, if you let it, feed you expensively and indifferently. The gap between those two outcomes is not really about which restaurant you choose. It is about understanding how eating works on this particular island.

What follows is less a list than a method, with a few long-standing places as fixed points.

The first distinction: taverna or beach club

Almost every meal on Mykonos falls into one of two categories, and they are different decisions.

The beach club is an event. You are paying for a bed, a view, a soundtrack and a certain amount of theatre, and the food is part of a package. Some of it is genuinely good. None of it is cheap. Psarou is the most conspicuous version of this, with Nammos as the reference point everyone uses, and the southern party beaches run their own variations.

The taverna is a meal. Plastic chairs or wooden ones, a handwritten list, fish in a cabinet, and a bill that bears some relation to what you ate.

Plan for both. A week of only beach clubs is exhausting and expensive. A week of only tavernas means you have not really seen what the island does. But be clear each time which one you are choosing, because arriving at a beach club expecting a taverna is how people end up with a story about how much lunch cost.

The long lunch is the main event

On Mykonos, as across the Cyclades, lunch outranks dinner. The best meals tend to be eaten in a swimming costume, some time after two, over three hours, with the sea in front of you.

The archetype is Kiki’s Tavern, above the bay at Agios Sostis on the north coast. It has been there since 1984. It has no sign and no electricity, and it does not take reservations. It grills over charcoal, serves salads and whatever is on that day, and operates on a waiting list held in the owner’s head.

People wait a long time, in the sun, with a glass of wine, and do not much mind. That is the point of the place, and it tells you something true about the island: the best table is rarely the one that was easiest to get.

The practical version of this advice is simply to protect one afternoon a week for a lunch with no plan after it.

Fish is sold by weight — ask first

This is the single most useful thing to know about eating in Greece, and it accounts for most unpleasant surprises.

Fresh fish is priced per kilo, not per plate. You choose the fish, it is weighed, and the price follows. A large fish for two people is a substantial sum.

There is nothing underhand about it. But ask for the price per kilo, and ask what the fish you have chosen weighs, before it goes on the grill. Any decent taverna will tell you without hesitation, and several will weigh it in front of you.

It is also worth asking what is fresh and what is frozen. Menus in Greece are required to indicate this, and the answer varies with the weather — when the Meltemi has been blowing hard, the boats have not been out.

Family tavernas, and why they last

The tavernas that have survived on Mykonos through fifty years of fashion tend to be family businesses that grow or catch a good deal of what they serve.

Nikolas, on the small beach at Agia Anna, has been run by the same family since 1967 and is now in its third generation. Vegetables and much of the meat come from the family’s own land nearby, and the fish is caught for that evening’s service. It is a straightforward place with a very good reason to exist.

In Chora, To Maereio does homestyle Mykonian cooking in the old town — the kind of short menu that changes little and does not need to.

Both illustrate the rule: on an island where a great many businesses open for one season and vanish, longevity is the most reliable signal available.

Eat inland at least once

Ano Mera, the island’s only inland village, has a plane-shaded square ringed with old-fashioned tavernas. Prices are lower, the pace is slower, and a noticeably higher proportion of the people eating around you live here.

It is twenty minutes from the coast and it is the easiest way to remember that Mykonos is a Greek island rather than a resort. Pair it with the monastery in the same square and you have a good half-day away from the beach.

What to look for on a menu

Mykonos has its own specialities, and they are worth seeking out rather than defaulting to the pan-Greek standards.

• Kopanisti — a sharp, peppery aged cheese, spread on bread or rusks. It is an acquired taste and worth acquiring.
• Louza — cured, air-dried pork, sliced thin. Often served with the kopanisti.
• Amygdalota — soft almond sweets, sold in the bakeries of Chora.
• Whatever is grilled and local — the vegetables on a dry Cycladic island are better than they have any right to be, and the tomatoes in August are the argument for coming in August.

Booking, and the August problem

In July and August, the good restaurants in Chora are booked. Not busy — booked, sometimes days ahead. If there is somewhere you particularly want to eat, reserve it before you arrive.

Two further practicalities. Parking in Mykonos Town is difficult to impossible in high season, so plan to arrive by taxi, bus or on foot. And Greek dinner runs late; a restaurant that looks empty at eight will be full at ten.

A useful strategy is to base yourself close enough to Chora that dinner does not require a logistical operation, but far enough out that you can leave the noise behind afterwards. The west coast handles this well — Bard de Sol, whose plunge-pool suites sit above the bay at Agios Stefanos, is minutes from the town’s restaurants and comfortably out of earshot of its bars.

A rough weekly plan

• One long beach lunch with no schedule attached.
• One inland meal at Ano Mera.
• One proper dinner in Chora, booked in advance.
• One beach club, if that appeals, treated as an outing.
• The rest improvised near wherever you are swimming.

That is a good week of eating on Mykonos, and it costs a fraction of what the island’s reputation suggests. Where you swim in between is a separate decision, and one that tends to follow from where you have chosen to stay.