Best Seafood in Mykonos — Fresh Aegean Fish with a Mexican Twist

Mykonos is a seafood island. The Aegean provides generously — sea bass, octopus, prawns, sea bream, soft-shell crab — and most restaurants on the island serve it the same way: grilled, with olive oil, lemon, and a side of Greek salad. It is simple, honest food, and at its best it is very good.

But there is one restaurant in Mykonos that takes that same extraordinary Aegean seafood and does something completely different with it. Something that makes you reconsider what fresh fish can taste like when it's handled by a kitchen with a different set of influences entirely.

Pūblico Restaurant & Mezcaleria is Mykonos' only authentic Mexican seafood restaurant — and it makes a strong case for being the best seafood dining experience on the island.

Why Mexican Seafood Works in Mykonos

The logic is straightforward once you encounter it. Baja California — the coastal Mexican region that inspires Pūblico's kitchen — has one of the world's great seafood culinary traditions. Ceviches, aguachile, fish tacos, whole grilled fish: these are dishes built around the freshest possible catch, treated with acid, heat, and bold flavour rather than simply grilled and served.

The Aegean provides ingredients that match that tradition perfectly. The seafood here is as fresh as anywhere in the world — pulled from cold, clean water, landed daily. In the hands of a kitchen trained in Baja California techniques, those ingredients produce dishes that taste unlike anything else in Mykonos.

Head Chef Martin Barrera — originally from Baja California and formerly of Carbone Doha — built Pūblico's menu around exactly this idea. Greek seafood. Mexican soul. An approach to cooking fish that is entirely its own.

The Seafood Menu at Pūblico

Pūblico's menu changes with the season and the catch, but the approach is consistent: the freshest available Aegean seafood, prepared with authentic Mexican technique and served on a terrace that looks exactly like the Mykonos you came here for.

Ceviche is the kitchen's purest expression of what it does — fresh fish cured in citrus, with chilli, herbs, and whatever the chef's instinct calls for that day. Made with Aegean catch, it is one of the best ceviches available in Greece.

Aguachile — a close relative of ceviche, spicier and sharper — is a dish most Mykonos visitors have never encountered. At Pūblico it is a revelation: bracingly fresh, beautifully balanced, the kind of dish that resets your palate and makes everything that follows taste more vivid.

Whole grilled fish with a Mexican-spiced crust brings the open flame cooking that is central to Pūblico's kitchen identity. The fish is Aegean — sea bass or sea bream depending on the day's catch — grilled over flame and finished with chilli, citrus, and house-made salsas that turn a familiar ingredient into something unfamiliar and better.

Tostadas and tacos built around fresh Aegean seafood — prawn, soft-shell crab, grilled fish — are the most approachable entry point into the menu for guests who are new to Mexican seafood cooking. The handmade tortillas — pressed and cooked to order on an open flame — are in a different category from anything else on the island.

Grilled octopus prepared with ancho chilli and Mexican spicing is another standout — a dish that bridges the Greek and Mexican traditions in a single plate, familiar in its main ingredient and surprising in everything else.

How Pūblico Compares to Greek Seafood Restaurants in Mykonos

This is not a competition — Greek seafood in Mykonos is genuinely excellent and worth eating. But Pūblico offers something the Greek restaurants don't: a completely different approach to the same ingredients, one that rewards curiosity and delivers a dining experience that is by definition unique to this restaurant.

The ratings reflect this. Pūblico holds a 4.9-star TripAdvisor rating — the highest of any Mexican restaurant in Mykonos — and has been featured in Condé Nast Traveler. Guests who come expecting a novelty leave having had one of the best seafood meals of their trip.

The restaurant's location reinforces the point. Steps from the old port in Mykonos Town — the same waters the fish was pulled from that morning — the setting is as Greek as it gets. The food, in the best possible way, is not.

The Mezcaleria — The Perfect Seafood Pairing

Seafood and agave spirits are a natural pairing — the acidity and salinity of fresh fish find their counterpart in the citrus-forward cocktails and the clean minerality of a good blanco tequila or a subtle espadín mezcal.

Pūblico's Mezcaleria bar — Mykonos' only dedicated tequila and mezcal cocktail bar — is built to make that pairing work. The bar team's smoky paloma, mezcal margarita, and house cocktails are designed alongside the food menu rather than independently of it. A ceviche with a paloma. Aguachile with a sharp mezcal margarita. Whole grilled fish with a reposado poured neat alongside.

For guests who want to explore the pairing properly, the bar team can guide you through the mezcal and tequila selection course by course.

Practical Information

• Where: Pūblico Restaurant & Mezcaleria, Mykonos Town (Old Town), steps from the old port.
• When: Open daily, 18:00–01:00.
• Price range: $–$$ (mid-to-upscale).
• Reservations: Essential in peak season (May–September).
• Group dining: Curated seafood tasting menus from €75 per person for groups of 8 or more.