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Dining in Greece
- By CWF Sources
- Published 04/20/2006
- Columnists & Blogs
Japan was well-represented by both trade buyers and the press.
My mother warned me about Greek restaurants.
“They use way too much oregano,” she said. “And they put tomato sauce on everything.”
Of course, she had never been to Greece. Though she had traveled widely in the United States, she lived most of her life in California. She had eaten in American restaurants operated by Greek people, but I suspect her Greek restaurant experience was less than comprehensive.
Many years after hearing Mom’s admonition, I discovered that the Chicago hotel I had just checked into was a couple of blocks from “Greek Town.” I couldn’t remember even encountering a Greek neighborhood back home in California. Navigating into possibly dangerous waters that night, I strolled over to Greek Town in search of a drink and dinner. Restaurants with names like Athena, Greek Islands, Parthenon, Pegasus and Santorini beckoned. The place I selected was more comfortable than exotic and was serving roasted lamb shank that night, one of my favorite dishes. Their preparation did involve some tomato sauce and I could taste oregano. But I loved it.
When the invitation came to learn more about Greek food and drink at a conference held in Athens this March, I jumped at the chance. In earlier articles we’ve covered the lectures and the tastings of the first two days. One week spent in the country can only whet a writer’s appetite for learning more about Greek cuisine-it doesn’t confer any expertise. Nevertheless, we thought we’d like to share some of our mealtime experiences with readers.
Greg Drescher of the Culinary Institute of America
and UK-based cookbook author and columnist
Marlena Spieler at the Athens Concert Hall reception.
Breakfast at the Intercontinental
Most of the attendees at the Kerasma* conference stayed at the Athenaeum Intercontinental. It’s a deluxe hotel whose employees all seem to speak English. Each day I had the 28-Euro breakfast buffet. All of the normal options familiar to British or American guests were represented, but I tended to sample lighter fare and the items I assumed were more Greek. Fresh fruit, smoked fish, olives, cheeses and delicious breads were abundant. Each morning I had prunes and dates-items that are grown in California but seldom find their way to my table. Taking a tip from a colleague, I tried the “ceramic” yogurt, which has just a bit more texture than the more familiar product. Wow. A bowl of this with dried fruit and honey felt like a healthy thing to do, but tasted great in the bargain.
Banquet at the Athens Concert Hall
Following the first day’s lectures and tastings, we returned to the Athens Concert Hall, where we found elegant surroundings for a banquet and some brief speeches, among them the remarks from George Algoskoufis, Greece’s Minister of Economy and Finance.
English food writer Bill Knight ponders the animated thoughts
of wine importer and exporter Dino Souchleris of Toronto, Canada.
On arrival we enjoyed Greek sparkling wines (“Ode Panos” Domaine Spiropoulos-Arkas S.A. and “1◦ Amideon Rose Demi Sec” Amideon Wineries UAC) and hors d’oeuvres (or whatever the Greek word might be for such pre-dinner tidbits). Guests came from many parts of the world. I joined a table that included an Australian wine writer, an English food critic, an American radio broadcaster from Hawaii, an enologist from a Greek wine company and a Toronto-based importer of Greek wines. Another man seated to my right introduced himself. As it happened, he was a food broker from San Carlos, California. Bob lives less than two hours away from me and, though we have mutual friends, our first meeting was at a table in Athens.
Dinner showcased products of Greek origin. The first course was brilliant-an “Aegean Fisherman’s Soup with Greek Saffron” which featured sea bream braised with chard and avgolemono sauce. Paired with the 2004 Santorini Sigalas from Domaine Sigalas, it was a crisp and bracing opening to the meal.
The talents of both Karathanos Thanassis, the enologist
for Tsantali (left) and Kostas Touloumtzis of the restaurant
Enoteca, ensure a fine evening of wine and food.
A salad incorporating chicory, green olive and orange followed before the main course of lamb wrapped in Greek manouri cheese, grape leaves and phyllo pastry. This was accompanied by two reds; a 2003 Gaia Estate and the 2001 Tsantali Rapsani Epilogmenos (Reserve).
The dessert course was served in what would be called an old fashioned glass in American bar parlance. It was a cheese mousse with dried figs, honey and lemon. Poured with it were 2001 Samos Anthemis and 2003 Mavrodapnhe of Patras Reserve. Coffee and a digestif (Distillate of Grapes, Muschat, K.Tsililis S.A.) were served. Banquets are difficult. This one was done particularly well, however. Our food and service were very good. It gave the visitors an opportunity to get to know each other and familiarize themselves with the Greek products they had come to learn about.
Dinner at the restaurant Enoteca
It was my good fortune to be included with a small group dining at Enoteca on the second night of the conference. Our meal the night before was a large and formal affair, but this was an opportunity for an intimate experience.
Irresistible meatballs.
Kerasma attendees were broken up into smaller groups and sent to several Athenian restaurants. Later, I heard from several colleagues who said they’d had a wonderful meal at 48 The Restaurant, prepared by Chef Christoforos Peskias, who’d worked in Spain at Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli. I have no doubt that their evening was spectacular, but I was happy to be in the group sent to Enoteca, a restaurant located in a former house in the Vrilissia section of Athens. Its proprietor, Kostas Touloumtzis, is a sommelier well-known on the world scene who owned a restaurant in Tuscany for 15 years. He arranged a meal for us that would complement a representative sample of his country’s wines. Admittedly, I’m a novice in describing Greek food, but I’m sure our courses were more traditional than avant garde. I enjoyed them and thought that they showed the wines to good advantage (or was it the job of the wines to show the food at its best? Either way, it’s the harmony of food and wine that makes for the best meal.).
Not having the advantage of a printed menu to recreate the meal, I must rely on handwritten notes, which may include phonetic-and very likely inaccurate-spellings of dishes and wines served during the evening.
Our first wine was a white, a vintage 2004 blend of Muscat and Roditz (Opeinoe Halore, Nemere) which was poured for the first two courses; an eggplant, cheese and pesto dish and bowls of little meatballs, which may (or may not) be called kefdes in Greek. Our second wine was a blend of Sauvignon Blanc (60%) and Asyrtiko (40%) from northern Greece. It accompanied a fine Greek risotto with asparagus.
Teti Perissaki of the Hellenic Foreign Trade Board found a spot at the table
between Olga Kartamysheva, the Editor of Bio vitrina, and Utz Graafmann,
Publisher of Wein-Plus.de.
The meal continued with dishes appropriate for red wines. Courses of “gyros on a plate” with a Tzatziki sauce preceded platters of lamb chops with a green salad. There may have been more wine choices on the table, but the two I remember are the 2002 Chateau Semeli, and the 2001 Tsantali Rapsani Epilegmenos. The former is a Greek Cabernet Sauvignon from the nearby Attica appellation. I was told that it’s a quite expensive wine by local standards (fortunately, the country hasn’t yet succumbed to the silliness of “cult wine collecting,” so the retail value of 30 Euros or more isn’t shocking to a Californian.). It was a very nice bottle of wine and would likely justify its price in a blind tasting with Cabs from other parts of the world. However, what I really liked was the 2001 Tsantali Rapsani, which I’d also enjoyed the night before at the Athens Concert Hall banquet. It was less expensive than the Chateau Semeli--though unless or until it’s imported to the U.S. that is irrelevant for me. More important is that it tasted great with the lamb chops.
Tatyana Zlodoreva traveled from Moscow, where she is
Publisher and CEO of Vitrina Publishing House.
We finished our meal with a desert of ice cream and layered pastry, accompanied by a grappa-like liqueur. The drink was distilled of three different grape varieties from a vineyard owned by monks--a place where “women can not go,” it was explained to us. “But they can taste the wine,” responded a Russian woman at the table, who took advantage of this apparently reasonable arrangement.
By my standards the evening was a success. I experienced a continuation of pairings of Greek wines and foods and left the table feeling I had a better understanding of the country’s cuisine. Moreover, I enjoyed the company of visitors from around the world in the spirit of fellowship and collegiality that springs from an evening of fine food and wine.
Lunch in Nafplio
Our guide has a rapt audience as she explains
the maritime history of Nafplio below us.
Most of us took advantage of a trip the next day to Nafplio. It was a couple hours by bus to this picturesque Peloponnesian town on the Argolikos Gulf. The outing brought the first look at Greek countryside, as we’d been occupied for the last several days in the urban confines of the city of Athens.
It was also an opportunity to learn a lot. Or it would have been, had our tour guide been able to prevail over the constant and inane chatter of a writer seated nearby. Our guide spoke from the microphone at the front of the bus. I heard fragmentary commentary on Greek history and mythology-information that would have made my visit all the richer-but the woman in the seat behind prattled on. She could have just been quiet or even gone to sleep, but she continued to blab away, assuming she had a sycophantic back-of-the-bus audience that was enjoying her bitching about having to listen to the commentary others of us might have found fascinating.
Press trips such as this are opportunities for journalists to get first-hand information for their frequently diverse audiences. For the most part, this is done in an atmosphere of civility and mutual respect, though such professionalism doesn’t preclude opportunities for high-spirited times in the off hours. Once in a while a colleague’s behavior will put him (or her) into the pariah category. People like this are too often tolerated when they could be pushed from a platform onto the tracks in front of a speeding train or put off the coach on a desolate stretch of road after nightfall. That traveling journalists don’t cull their herd this way is more pragmatic than moral, I am sure. A colleague observed that our clueless companion, who had spent two hours complaining about the guide’s erudite narration, went into a souvenir shop and purchased a guidebook to the area immediately after we arrived at Nafplio. This seemingly inconsistent behavior puzzled me for a day or two. Later I concluded that she was as clever as she was boorish. She would likely pepper her story with facts and esoterica cribbed from the guidebook so that some naïve editor would believe she knew what the hell she was talking about.
Our bus took us far up the hill overlooking Nafplio and the sea below. When it could go no further, we exited and took an elevator several stories up the mountain to arrive at the very upscale Nafplia Palace, whose Amimoni Restaurant was the site of our lunch. The dining rooms are modern with spectacular views of the old town and water below.
Some of us would stay on in Greece, but this was the last “official” meal for the group. Our hosts had arranged a wonderful lunch for us, which of course included wines. Someone at my table-perhaps it was one of the New York food brokers at my left--asked about the availability of Ouzo. Yes, a before-lunch drink sounded like a good idea, but I hesitated just a moment. Was it presumptuous to order drinks when someone else who’s picking up the tab has already arranged things? Apparently not. Our gracious hosts may have had that in mind anyway. They seemed flattered that we wanted this very traditional drink and that we were adopting Greek customs.
Conversation at the eight-top table flowed easier after the Ouzo went down and there was more than a little rumination about “what the people back home are doing now.” We’d all traveled to Greece for work and not a vacation, but this was toil of a most pleasant sort. An excellent white wine was poured to accompany our artichoke and feta salad and a red was found to pair with our roasted lamb. Lamb for the third day in a row elicited no complaints from me. I enjoyed the Greek lamb so much that lamb was the first dinner I wanted to cook when I returned to California. Dessert was billed as “Kantaif with mastic cream” and it was as tasty as it looked.
A very palatable dessert featuring the mysterious mastic cream.
A chef I seemed to remember from the cooking demonstrations at the Athens Concert Hall dropped by at the conclusion of our meal and spoke with people across the table. This fellow, whose name was Yiannis Baxevannis, I believe, had recently opened a restaurant in Athens under his own name according to a magazine I picked up in that city. Perhaps I misidentified the man in the white chef’s coat, or maybe it was Yiannis and he was doing a guest stint in this kitchen. Whoever was responsible for this wonderful meal deserves acknowledgement.
Editor’s note: This article concludes our four-part series on Greek wine and food. Earlier installments can still be accessed at:
www.californiawineandfood.com/events/greek-wine.htm
www.californiawineandfood.com/events/greek-wine-2.htm
www.californiawineandfood.com/events/greek-wine-3.htm
*And more information about Greece and its food and drink can be had at: www.kerasma.com
My mother warned me about Greek restaurants.
“They use way too much oregano,” she said. “And they put tomato sauce on everything.”
Of course, she had never been to Greece. Though she had traveled widely in the United States, she lived most of her life in California. She had eaten in American restaurants operated by Greek people, but I suspect her Greek restaurant experience was less than comprehensive.
Many years after hearing Mom’s admonition, I discovered that the Chicago hotel I had just checked into was a couple of blocks from “Greek Town.” I couldn’t remember even encountering a Greek neighborhood back home in California. Navigating into possibly dangerous waters that night, I strolled over to Greek Town in search of a drink and dinner. Restaurants with names like Athena, Greek Islands, Parthenon, Pegasus and Santorini beckoned. The place I selected was more comfortable than exotic and was serving roasted lamb shank that night, one of my favorite dishes. Their preparation did involve some tomato sauce and I could taste oregano. But I loved it.
When the invitation came to learn more about Greek food and drink at a conference held in Athens this March, I jumped at the chance. In earlier articles we’ve covered the lectures and the tastings of the first two days. One week spent in the country can only whet a writer’s appetite for learning more about Greek cuisine-it doesn’t confer any expertise. Nevertheless, we thought we’d like to share some of our mealtime experiences with readers.
Greg Drescher of the Culinary Institute of America
and UK-based cookbook author and columnist
Marlena Spieler at the Athens Concert Hall reception.
Breakfast at the Intercontinental
Most of the attendees at the Kerasma* conference stayed at the Athenaeum Intercontinental. It’s a deluxe hotel whose employees all seem to speak English. Each day I had the 28-Euro breakfast buffet. All of the normal options familiar to British or American guests were represented, but I tended to sample lighter fare and the items I assumed were more Greek. Fresh fruit, smoked fish, olives, cheeses and delicious breads were abundant. Each morning I had prunes and dates-items that are grown in California but seldom find their way to my table. Taking a tip from a colleague, I tried the “ceramic” yogurt, which has just a bit more texture than the more familiar product. Wow. A bowl of this with dried fruit and honey felt like a healthy thing to do, but tasted great in the bargain.
Banquet at the Athens Concert Hall
Following the first day’s lectures and tastings, we returned to the Athens Concert Hall, where we found elegant surroundings for a banquet and some brief speeches, among them the remarks from George Algoskoufis, Greece’s Minister of Economy and Finance.
English food writer Bill Knight ponders the animated thoughts
of wine importer and exporter Dino Souchleris of Toronto, Canada.
On arrival we enjoyed Greek sparkling wines (“Ode Panos” Domaine Spiropoulos-Arkas S.A. and “1◦ Amideon Rose Demi Sec” Amideon Wineries UAC) and hors d’oeuvres (or whatever the Greek word might be for such pre-dinner tidbits). Guests came from many parts of the world. I joined a table that included an Australian wine writer, an English food critic, an American radio broadcaster from Hawaii, an enologist from a Greek wine company and a Toronto-based importer of Greek wines. Another man seated to my right introduced himself. As it happened, he was a food broker from San Carlos, California. Bob lives less than two hours away from me and, though we have mutual friends, our first meeting was at a table in Athens.
Dinner showcased products of Greek origin. The first course was brilliant-an “Aegean Fisherman’s Soup with Greek Saffron” which featured sea bream braised with chard and avgolemono sauce. Paired with the 2004 Santorini Sigalas from Domaine Sigalas, it was a crisp and bracing opening to the meal.
The talents of both Karathanos Thanassis, the enologist
for Tsantali (left) and Kostas Touloumtzis of the restaurant
Enoteca, ensure a fine evening of wine and food.
A salad incorporating chicory, green olive and orange followed before the main course of lamb wrapped in Greek manouri cheese, grape leaves and phyllo pastry. This was accompanied by two reds; a 2003 Gaia Estate and the 2001 Tsantali Rapsani Epilogmenos (Reserve).
The dessert course was served in what would be called an old fashioned glass in American bar parlance. It was a cheese mousse with dried figs, honey and lemon. Poured with it were 2001 Samos Anthemis and 2003 Mavrodapnhe of Patras Reserve. Coffee and a digestif (Distillate of Grapes, Muschat, K.Tsililis S.A.) were served. Banquets are difficult. This one was done particularly well, however. Our food and service were very good. It gave the visitors an opportunity to get to know each other and familiarize themselves with the Greek products they had come to learn about.
Dinner at the restaurant Enoteca
It was my good fortune to be included with a small group dining at Enoteca on the second night of the conference. Our meal the night before was a large and formal affair, but this was an opportunity for an intimate experience.
Irresistible meatballs.
Kerasma attendees were broken up into smaller groups and sent to several Athenian restaurants. Later, I heard from several colleagues who said they’d had a wonderful meal at 48 The Restaurant, prepared by Chef Christoforos Peskias, who’d worked in Spain at Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli. I have no doubt that their evening was spectacular, but I was happy to be in the group sent to Enoteca, a restaurant located in a former house in the Vrilissia section of Athens. Its proprietor, Kostas Touloumtzis, is a sommelier well-known on the world scene who owned a restaurant in Tuscany for 15 years. He arranged a meal for us that would complement a representative sample of his country’s wines. Admittedly, I’m a novice in describing Greek food, but I’m sure our courses were more traditional than avant garde. I enjoyed them and thought that they showed the wines to good advantage (or was it the job of the wines to show the food at its best? Either way, it’s the harmony of food and wine that makes for the best meal.).
Not having the advantage of a printed menu to recreate the meal, I must rely on handwritten notes, which may include phonetic-and very likely inaccurate-spellings of dishes and wines served during the evening.
Our first wine was a white, a vintage 2004 blend of Muscat and Roditz (Opeinoe Halore, Nemere) which was poured for the first two courses; an eggplant, cheese and pesto dish and bowls of little meatballs, which may (or may not) be called kefdes in Greek. Our second wine was a blend of Sauvignon Blanc (60%) and Asyrtiko (40%) from northern Greece. It accompanied a fine Greek risotto with asparagus.
Teti Perissaki of the Hellenic Foreign Trade Board found a spot at the table
between Olga Kartamysheva, the Editor of Bio vitrina, and Utz Graafmann,
Publisher of Wein-Plus.de.
The meal continued with dishes appropriate for red wines. Courses of “gyros on a plate” with a Tzatziki sauce preceded platters of lamb chops with a green salad. There may have been more wine choices on the table, but the two I remember are the 2002 Chateau Semeli, and the 2001 Tsantali Rapsani Epilegmenos. The former is a Greek Cabernet Sauvignon from the nearby Attica appellation. I was told that it’s a quite expensive wine by local standards (fortunately, the country hasn’t yet succumbed to the silliness of “cult wine collecting,” so the retail value of 30 Euros or more isn’t shocking to a Californian.). It was a very nice bottle of wine and would likely justify its price in a blind tasting with Cabs from other parts of the world. However, what I really liked was the 2001 Tsantali Rapsani, which I’d also enjoyed the night before at the Athens Concert Hall banquet. It was less expensive than the Chateau Semeli--though unless or until it’s imported to the U.S. that is irrelevant for me. More important is that it tasted great with the lamb chops.
Tatyana Zlodoreva traveled from Moscow, where she is
Publisher and CEO of Vitrina Publishing House.
We finished our meal with a desert of ice cream and layered pastry, accompanied by a grappa-like liqueur. The drink was distilled of three different grape varieties from a vineyard owned by monks--a place where “women can not go,” it was explained to us. “But they can taste the wine,” responded a Russian woman at the table, who took advantage of this apparently reasonable arrangement.
By my standards the evening was a success. I experienced a continuation of pairings of Greek wines and foods and left the table feeling I had a better understanding of the country’s cuisine. Moreover, I enjoyed the company of visitors from around the world in the spirit of fellowship and collegiality that springs from an evening of fine food and wine.
Lunch in Nafplio
Our guide has a rapt audience as she explains
the maritime history of Nafplio below us.
Most of us took advantage of a trip the next day to Nafplio. It was a couple hours by bus to this picturesque Peloponnesian town on the Argolikos Gulf. The outing brought the first look at Greek countryside, as we’d been occupied for the last several days in the urban confines of the city of Athens.
It was also an opportunity to learn a lot. Or it would have been, had our tour guide been able to prevail over the constant and inane chatter of a writer seated nearby. Our guide spoke from the microphone at the front of the bus. I heard fragmentary commentary on Greek history and mythology-information that would have made my visit all the richer-but the woman in the seat behind prattled on. She could have just been quiet or even gone to sleep, but she continued to blab away, assuming she had a sycophantic back-of-the-bus audience that was enjoying her bitching about having to listen to the commentary others of us might have found fascinating.
Press trips such as this are opportunities for journalists to get first-hand information for their frequently diverse audiences. For the most part, this is done in an atmosphere of civility and mutual respect, though such professionalism doesn’t preclude opportunities for high-spirited times in the off hours. Once in a while a colleague’s behavior will put him (or her) into the pariah category. People like this are too often tolerated when they could be pushed from a platform onto the tracks in front of a speeding train or put off the coach on a desolate stretch of road after nightfall. That traveling journalists don’t cull their herd this way is more pragmatic than moral, I am sure. A colleague observed that our clueless companion, who had spent two hours complaining about the guide’s erudite narration, went into a souvenir shop and purchased a guidebook to the area immediately after we arrived at Nafplio. This seemingly inconsistent behavior puzzled me for a day or two. Later I concluded that she was as clever as she was boorish. She would likely pepper her story with facts and esoterica cribbed from the guidebook so that some naïve editor would believe she knew what the hell she was talking about.
Our bus took us far up the hill overlooking Nafplio and the sea below. When it could go no further, we exited and took an elevator several stories up the mountain to arrive at the very upscale Nafplia Palace, whose Amimoni Restaurant was the site of our lunch. The dining rooms are modern with spectacular views of the old town and water below.
Some of us would stay on in Greece, but this was the last “official” meal for the group. Our hosts had arranged a wonderful lunch for us, which of course included wines. Someone at my table-perhaps it was one of the New York food brokers at my left--asked about the availability of Ouzo. Yes, a before-lunch drink sounded like a good idea, but I hesitated just a moment. Was it presumptuous to order drinks when someone else who’s picking up the tab has already arranged things? Apparently not. Our gracious hosts may have had that in mind anyway. They seemed flattered that we wanted this very traditional drink and that we were adopting Greek customs.
Conversation at the eight-top table flowed easier after the Ouzo went down and there was more than a little rumination about “what the people back home are doing now.” We’d all traveled to Greece for work and not a vacation, but this was toil of a most pleasant sort. An excellent white wine was poured to accompany our artichoke and feta salad and a red was found to pair with our roasted lamb. Lamb for the third day in a row elicited no complaints from me. I enjoyed the Greek lamb so much that lamb was the first dinner I wanted to cook when I returned to California. Dessert was billed as “Kantaif with mastic cream” and it was as tasty as it looked.
A very palatable dessert featuring the mysterious mastic cream.
A chef I seemed to remember from the cooking demonstrations at the Athens Concert Hall dropped by at the conclusion of our meal and spoke with people across the table. This fellow, whose name was Yiannis Baxevannis, I believe, had recently opened a restaurant in Athens under his own name according to a magazine I picked up in that city. Perhaps I misidentified the man in the white chef’s coat, or maybe it was Yiannis and he was doing a guest stint in this kitchen. Whoever was responsible for this wonderful meal deserves acknowledgement.
Editor’s note: This article concludes our four-part series on Greek wine and food. Earlier installments can still be accessed at:
www.californiawineandfood.com/events/greek-wine.htm
www.californiawineandfood.com/events/greek-wine-2.htm
www.californiawineandfood.com/events/greek-wine-3.htm
*And more information about Greece and its food and drink can be had at: www.kerasma.com