Chios has a genuine local food culture centred on a few distinctive ingredients: mastic, which flavours local sweets, liqueurs, and even savoury dishes; fresh fish from the surrounding Aegean; and excellent local olive oil. The island is also known for its tangerine production and for loukoumades (honey-drenched doughnuts) made with mastic-flavoured dough.
The waterfront in Chios town has the usual range of tourist-facing tavernas, but the better eating tends to be in the side streets behind the port. Look for restaurants serving mastelo (lamb or goat cooked in wine with mastic) and the local variant of skordalia (garlic sauce) made with mastic-flavoured bread.
In the mastic villages of the south, several restaurants serve food that incorporates mastic into savoury cooking in ways you will not find elsewhere in Greece.