THE KITCHEN GARDEN
An encyclopedia of Apollo Bio Farm's Greek varieties
Twenty-nine fruits, vegetables and herbs grow across the rows of Apollo Bio Farm — island heirlooms and everyday staples alike. This is the full story behind each one: where it comes from, what makes it distinct, and how it finds its way, in season, onto the tables of Apollo Corfu.
Apollo Bio Farm - Established 2024
HOW IT BEGAN
In 2024, on a quiet stretch of land at the edge of the resort, we started something simple: we began growing our own food.
The land made the case first — a gently sloping piece of ground, warmed by the same Ionian sun that reaches the beaches below, too good to leave idle. Around the same time, our kitchens were asking a harder question: why bring in tomatoes, herbs, and vegetables from elsewhere, when a resort this size could grow so much of it ourselves, better, and closer to the table it would end up on?
The answer came from people who each brought their own reason for wanting this to exist.
The people who brought Apollo Corfu into being had long believed that a resort's value lies as much in its soil as in its rooms. They wanted to invest in something slower than most hospitality decisions allow — land, seasons, and the patient work of growing something real, rather than simply buying it in.
Philippos Stamelos, who leads Apollo Corfu, understood exactly what that meant, because he had lived it. He grew up on a farm, in a house where the calendar was set by planting and harvest rather than by a front desk. That upbringing still shapes how he thinks about hospitality today: food tastes different when you've watched it grow, and a guest can tell the difference even if they can't say why.
And then there was Asterios Kiriakos, our Executive Chef, who grew up at the foot of Mount Olympus in a family of farmers and livestock breeders, in a house that kept goats and sheep, where cheese and yoghurt were made by hand because that was simply how the household ate. He knows the difference between a tomato picked that morning and one that travelled to get here, because he was raised inside that difference. It's why he hosts the Thursday Farmer Breakfast himself, walking guests through the very rows this encyclopedia describes.
Between these three, the idea stopped being a nice one and became a working farm: twenty-one varieties of vegetables and fruit, eight herbs, planted, tended, and picked by hand — feeding Coryfo restaurant, Asador Farm to Flame, Soleni, and La Cantina in turn.
But it took far more than three people to make it real. Gardeners, waiters, chefs, drivers, people whose actual jobs had nothing to do with farming at all — they gave their time almost as volunteers, simply because they liked the idea enough to want it to work. Nobody assigned most of it. They just showed up, again and again, until showing up became the tradition. That quiet, collective willingness is still what keeps Apollo Bio Farm running well today, one season after another.
It isn't large. It was never meant to be. It's simply proof that the shortest distance between a field and a plate is worth the effort of keeping open.
TOMATOES
Tomata Megali
Large Tomato
The workhorse of the Mediterranean table. Sliced thick and dressed with little more than olive oil, oregano, and salt, it needs no embellishment when ripened properly on the vine. At Apollo Bio Farm it's grown in full sun through the height of summer, reaching its sweetest in July and August. It's the tomato behind the Greek salad at Asador Farm to Flame restaurant, cut into thick wedges the traditional way and left to speak for itself.
Tomata Saltsas
Sauce Tomato
Bred for concentration rather than juice. Its flesh is dense, its water content low, and its skin easy to remove after a quick blanch — all qualities that make it the variety of choice for slow-cooked sauces. La Cantina's kitchen turns it into the pizza and spaghetti sauces at the heart of its menu, simmered down until it's rich enough to need nothing more than good pasta or a well-fired crust.
Tomataki Mavro
Black Cherry Tomato
A darker, more complex relative of the common cherry tomato, with a flavour that leans toward smoke and caramel rather than straightforward sweetness. Its deep colour comes from anthocyanins that develop under strong sun exposure — exactly what Corfu provides in abundance through the summer months. Farmers here tend to eat these straight from the plant rather than cook with them, a habit any visitor is welcome to adopt while walking the rows.
Tomataki Kokkino
Red Cherry Tomato
Small, thin-skinned, and reliably sweet, this is the tomato most likely to disappear before it reaches the kitchen. Its sugar content develops fastest in the final week before ripeness, which is why timing the harvest matters more with this variety than almost any other on the farm. Coryfo restaurant folds these, slow-roasted, into the Fresh Pasta al Pomodoro, where their concentrated sweetness balances the dish's acidity.
Tomata Kerkyras
Corfu Tomato
An heirloom variety specific to the island, grown from seed lines that predate the commercial hybrids found in most supermarkets today. Medium in size, irregular in shape, and markedly more aromatic than its uniform modern cousins, it's the tomato older generations on Corfu still consider the only 'real' one. Apollo Bio Farm maintains a dedicated bed for this variety specifically to keep the seed line alive for the next planting season.
Peppers
Piperia Kerato
Horn Pepper
Named for its long, curved silhouette, this sweet pepper has thin walls that char and blister quickly over open flame, making it a natural for grilling whole. Its sugars concentrate as it ripens from green to red, so the farm harvests at both stages depending on whether the kitchen wants a sharper or sweeter result that day. Asador Farm to Flame restaurant works it into its salads, char and all.
Piperia Kafteri
Hot Pepper
Small in size but assertive in effect, this pepper carries enough heat to transform a dish with a single sliced ring. La Cantina uses it sparingly in its sauces — a background note rather than a dominant flavour — the same restraint Corfiot cooking has always applied to heat.
Piperia Prasini
Green Pepper
Harvested before its sugars have had time to develop, this is the pepper at its most vegetal and crisp. Its grassy bitterness is prized specifically for that reason, standing in contrast to the sweeter red and yellow peppers picked later in the same plant's life. Soleni restaurant uses it raw, sliced into its salads for exactly that crunch.
Eggplants
Melitzana Tsakonikh
Tsakoniki Eggplant
Recognisable by its pale purple stripes, this variety originates from the Tsakonia region of the Peloponnese but has found a comfortable second home in Corfu's gardens. It's notably milder and less bitter than darker eggplant varieties, with fewer seeds, which means less salting and resting before cooking — a practical advantage in a professional kitchen working against the clock.
Melitzana Flaski
Flaski Eggplant
Round rather than elongated — its name literally means 'flask-shaped' — this variety's compact, dense form makes it the natural choice for stuffing whole, hollowed out and filled with rice, herbs, or minced meat before baking. Its flesh holds its structure well under heat, resisting the collapse that thinner varieties are prone to. Asador Farm to Flame restaurant pairs it with beef in a traditional Greek dish served once a week — a standing appointment worth planning a dinner around.
Melitzana Elliniki
Greek Eggplant
The deep-purple, elongated eggplant found in kitchens across the country, and the variety most people picture when they hear the word. At Apollo Bio Farm it goes into Coryfo restaurant's slow-cooked goat, folded into an eggplant mousse that sits beneath the meat — proof that a humble, everyday vegetable can carry a dish as easily as the protein it's served with.
Squash & Gourds
Kolokythi
Zucchini
Harvested young, usually within a week of the flower fading, while the skin is still thin enough to eat and the seeds inside haven't yet turned fibrous. Left longer on the vine it grows enormous and increasingly bland — so the farm's picking schedule here is less about size and entirely about timing.
Kolokitha Lira
Yellow Pumpkin
A smaller, sweeter pumpkin than its giant orange cousin, with dense flesh that roasts down to something close to caramel. Its name, 'lira,' nods to its coin-like rounded shape. Each morning a portion of the harvest goes into the resort's breakfast pie, its natural sweetness needing little more than a few farm eggs and good pastry.
Kolokytha Portokali
Large Orange Pumpkin
The largest single crop grown on the farm, sometimes reaching weights that require two people to carry. Ribbed, deeply orange, and dense-fleshed, it's harvested at the very end of the season and stored for winter use — a genuinely old-fashioned approach to eating with the calendar rather than against it.
Garden & Field
Selino
Celery
Grown as much for its perfume as for its crunch, this variety has a more concentrated, almost peppery aroma than the celery found in most supermarkets. It forms the aromatic backbone of stocks and broths across Corfiot cooking, alongside carrot and onion, and is rarely eaten raw on its own.
Angouri
Cucumber
Cool, crisp, and reliably abundant through the height of summer, this is the vegetable that keeps the farm's salads from wilting under the midday sun. Its high water content makes it as much a hydration strategy as a flavour one on the hottest days of the Corfiot calendar.
Peponi
Melon
Netted skin gives way to honey-sweet flesh that ripens slowly under the same sun the resort's guests enjoy poolside. Ripeness is judged by scent rather than colour — a properly ready melon announces itself from several feet away, long before it's cut.
Karpouzi
Watermelon
Nine parts water and one part pure pleasure, this is Corfu's most reliable answer to an August afternoon. Farmers judge ripeness the old way — a firm knock and a listen for the right hollow sound — a skill that takes seasons to develop and is rarely taught, only absorbed.
Iliosporos
Cucumber
Cool, crisp, and reliably abundant through the height of summer, this is the vegetable that keeps the farm's salads from wilting under the midday sun. Its high water content makes it as much a hydration strategy as a flavour one on the hottest days of the Corfiot calendar.
Kalampoki
Corn
Grown at the field's edge where the soil runs deepest, this variety is sweet enough to eat straight off the cob when picked at the right moment — a narrow window of a day or two before the sugars begin converting to starch and the kernels lose their snap.
Anginara
Artichoke
A vegetable that asks for patience before it gives anything back — layer after layer of tough outer leaves stand between the eater and the tender heart at the centre. Grown slowly over a full season, it rewards exactly the kind of unhurried attention that defines the farm's approach to everything else it grows.
Herbs
Rigani
Oregano
Wild on Corfu's limestone hillsides long before it was ever deliberately planted, this is oregano at its sharpest and most resinous. Apollo's farmers gather it by hand each June and dry it in small bundles in the open air. Coryfo restaurant's kitchen reaches for it wherever a Mediterranean dish needs its wild, sun-warmed character — most naturally alongside the day's grilled catch.
Levanta
Lavender
Prized as much for its calming effect as its colour since it first arrived in Mediterranean gardens centuries ago. Cut at first light, when its essential oils sit heaviest in the bud and before the bees have claimed the day's pollen, it's dried slowly for tea, for linen drawers, and for the quiet hour before sleep that the resort's wellness philosophy is built around.
Louiza
Lemon Verbena
A South American native that found an unlikely permanent home on Mediterranean balconies generations ago. Brush a single leaf and it releases the scent of lemon before it's even been picked. Dried at the farm's edge, it becomes the tea Corfiot households have poured each evening for a hundred years — a quiet ritual this resort continues in its own way.
Menta
Peppermint
The most persistent plant on the farm, spreading further into new ground each season regardless of how carefully it's contained. Its sharp, cooling character cuts through rich food and hot afternoons with equal ease, which is exactly why every kitchen on the island keeps a pot of it within easy reach.
Diosmos
Spearmint
Milder and greener than peppermint, and the variety any Corfiot cook will insist is the true mint of home cooking — the herb behind keftedes, dolmades, and the Sunday lunch table across the island. Grown fresh in the farm's kitchen garden, it's typically cut the same morning it's used.
Thymari
Thyme
Wiry, low-growing, and fragrant even under August's hardest sun, this is the plant that gives Corfiot honey its particular depth of flavour, foraged by bees from the same hillsides where the farm grows its own. Slow-cooked dishes have leaned on its resinous warmth for as long as anyone on the island can remember.
Faskomilo
Sage
Mountain tea before it's anything else on Corfu — silver-grey leaves gathered from high ground and brewed strong by grandmothers who swore by it for everything from the common cold to a long, unhurried conversation. It grows more slowly than the farm's other herbs and asks for correspondingly more patience in return.
Dendrolivano
Rosemary
Evergreen through every season, lining the paths of Apollo Bio Farm and releasing its scent to anyone who brushes past on the way to the fields beyond. It's one of the few herbs that genuinely improves with heat and time: folded into Coryfo restaurant's Tournedos Black Angus, rosemary and almond finish the dish's Butiero sauce.
