Hand-opened phyllo baked around either semolina custard or sweet myzithra, cut into squares with a scraper, then dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon. In Heraklion it is breakfast, and it is eaten standing up.
Where to eat it: 2 restaurants across 1 city.
Bougatsa came to Crete with refugees from Asia Minor after 1922. Phyllosophies traces its own line to a bougatsa master from Hamidiye, a district of Smyrna, and dates its trade on Lions Square to 1922. Kirkor has worked the same square for close to a century. The Thessaloniki version of the pie sticks to semolina cream. Heraklion made a local variant by swapping in sweetened myzithra, the fresh whey cheese that Cretan dairies produce in quantity, which gives a tangier, less sugary pie. The ritual has not changed in a century: order at the counter, watch the pie cut into squares on the board, take it outside while it is still too hot to hold.
Common allergens: Gluten, Dairy
Tip from the editors. For the Heraklion version, replace the semolina cream with 700g sweetened fresh myzithra beaten with two eggs.
Kirkor sells bougatsa on Lions Square in Heraklion for just a few euros, which makes its counter the cheapest good breakfast in the entire city.
Try: Bougatsa
Order: Bougatsa with custard, cinnamon and icing sugar
Tip: A bougatsa and a Greek coffee is breakfast for under five euros, which is the cheapest sit-down in the old town.
Phyllosophies keeps prices low on Lions Square in Heraklion, where a bougatsa or a hand-opened greens pie costs less than a coffee elsewhere.
Try: Bougatsa and pies
Order: Bougatsa with sweet myzithra, honey and walnuts
Tip: The savoury chortopites and tyropites cost about the same as the sweet bougatsa and travel better in a bag.
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