With its baby blue cabinets lined with icons and embroidery, the Theodorou family’s confectionery looks more like an old-fashioned parlor. Regulars gossip as their nougat wafers and Turkish delight are weighed on antique scales. Founded in 1933, it was the first sweet shop in Artemonas, the loveliest village on Sifnos. Vasilodimos Theodorou still runs the family business with his nonagenarian parents, Nikos and Katina. There are neatly stacked boxes of amygdalota (ground almond sweets), tubs of ypovrichio (sugar paste perfumed with mastic, bergamot, or rosewater), and pastelli (sticky honey and sesame bars, traditionally handed out at weddings, baptisms, and church festivals). Everything is cooked over a wood fire in gleaming copper pans in the kitchen behind the shop counter.
