Nicosia, Cyprus. Traditional Cypriot dishes have become a way for families on the island and abroad to preserve identity, remember places they left behind, and adapt to new lives while maintaining ties to their past.
Food in Cyprus is often passed down through repeated meals and family habits, reflecting migration, memory and cultural exchange over time.
Food as living memory
For Cypriots who have moved abroad, food has remained an integral part of maintaining culture in new places. Irene Matys, author of My Cypriot Table, said food became one of the most powerful ways her family held on to home after arriving in Canada as refugees from Cyprus.
“When my family arrived in Canada as refugees from Cyprus, food become one of the most powerful ways we held on to home,” Matys said. “We had left behind the life we knew, our extended family, but in the kitchen, my yiayia and mama kept those memories alive.”
She said dishes such as eliopita, halloumi over pasta and lamb souvla at Easter helped preserve family memories. “Cooking those dishes wasn’t just about feeding the family; it was about recreating a sense of belonging in a new country,” she said.
Recipes carried through families
While food commonly helps preserve identity across cultures, in Cyprus this role is often transmitted within families rather than through formal instruction. Matys described this as a form of “living memory”.
“When families leave their homeland, so many aspects of life change,” she said. “But recipes travel with people… Cooking those dishes becomes an act of cultural preservation. It’s a way of saying, this is who we are, and this is where our story began.”
Cuisine shaped by cultural exchange
Cypriot cuisine reflects the influence of multiple cultures. Positioned between Europe and the Middle East, Cyprus has absorbed elements from Greek and Ottoman cuisines as well as Levantine flavours, often without clear distinctions between them.
“In our family kitchen, those influences are blended naturally,” Matys said. “Growing up, we didn’t think about it as layers of history, it was simply the food our family cooked.”
Younger generations abroad
For younger Cypriots living abroad, maintaining culinary traditions has often become a more deliberate process of discovery rather than inheritance. British Cypriot home cook Nikoletta Nicolaou, now based in Sydney, described food as a way to bridge distance from both her native country and her loved ones.