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A remarkable café-bar set in the city’s old icehouse, serving Italian, Greek and iced coffee all day long. The decoration includes mementos of the building’s past, including the old ice lift.

With tables on the east side of the harbour, Aroma is a popular rendezvous for young locals. Fine views of the harbour and a pleasant place for breakfast, morning coffee, an aperitif or after-dinner drinks.

Delightful café-bar midway along the mole that encloses the Venetian harbour. The best place in town for a sunset drink, with views across the water to the old town.

This elegant rendezvous in an old Venetian mansion on the harbour opens early and stays open late. It has tables on the quay, up on a roof terrace and inside, within rooms prettily decorated with frescoes.

A colourful ouzeri-bar, just a few steps from Paleochora’s eastern waterfront and ferry dock, serving delicious snacks and light meals, well-priced beers, wines and cocktails. All drinks are accompanied by generous portions of traditional meze. Friendly service, good music and a lively Greek atmosphere.

A prettily decorated and newly opened café, opposite Rethymno’s Rimondi Fountain and close to some of the best shopping in town.

A clutch of cafés and bars are crammed cheek by jowl into Petihaki, among them this ouzeri which serves tasty snacks, and raki and ouzo for those who have acquired a taste for Cretan-style spirits.

This ouzeri-restaurant next to Rethymno’s Town Hall is more authentically Cretan than most, serving good mezes and fish dishes, as well as a plethora of drinks, including, of course, a choice of rakis and ouzos. Often live traditional music at night.

As well as a proper restaurant, this all-purpose nightspot also has a traditional café and ouzo bar, serving meze in the courtyard of an attractively restored old building (see Anna Bei 1900, Ierapetra).

Frequented more by locals than visitors, Kali Kardia (“Good Heart”) makes few concessions to tourist tastes. Authentic meze, from local cheeses to grilled snails, are washed down with strong Cretan retsina straight from the barrel.