Eating in Greece II: Greec-ier

Duders & Strach Attack:

Time for some em-effing specifics on what I ate in Greece.

As mentioned in my previous post on Greece, they like their tapas style meals there. I quickly became addicted to Tsaziki and ordered it every time I sat down at a taverna. Other frequently ordered items were moussaka, dolmades, and feta prepared in one of fifty-thousand ways. In areas close to the water fish, shellfish, calamari, octopus, and lobster appear on menus.

Here is a photo of a lunch foodfriend DC and I shared. Pictured are clams, moussaka, and a cold appetizer sampler that included potato salad, eggplant salad, skordalia - a garlic spread, and tsaziki.

The taverna item that I enjoyed the most was mussels saganaki – mussels prepared with tomoatoes and feta. I regret having never taken a picture of this dish. By they way, thought it is a pretty common practice for food bloggers, I almost always feel weird taking photos of my food in a restaurant… I just wanted that sentiment to go in the record.

I was also able to experience Greek “special day” food as I was fortunate enough to be in Greece for Greek Orthodox Easter. This year, it was celebrated one week after the Easter of the other sects. In the Greek Orthodox church, Easter is the most important holidy – even more important than Christmas. I guess they think that a man rising from the dead is a bigger miracle than a virgin giving birth.

98% of the Greek people are Greek Orthodox and quite a few of them seem to follow the practice of avoiding meat during Lent. Then on the midnight that leads into Easter Sunday they attend Easter Mass. Afterwards they go home and ease back into a diet including meat with a stew made of lamb liver and intestines. The next day, an elaborate Easter meal is served.

DC and I were fortunate enough to arrive at our hotel in Santorini just in time for this meal. He snapped this pic before we sat down.

As you can see from the photo, the centerpiece of this meal is spit roasted KBB’99 drawings. The Greeks refer to this as roasted lamb.

All of this food was great, but in the end it baffles me that anyone in Greece ever bothers to sit down to eat. I’m sure there is some quote somewhere about judging a culture or a cuisine by the quality of its street-food, but I don’t know what they are. In any case, the gyros in Greece were by far the most enjoyable thing DC and I ate. Lamb was the tastiest filling, but I enjoyed dabbling in pork and chicken fillings occasionally. The gyros varied considerably in quality (our favorite being those produced by the Outlaw Brothers stand in Santorini) but not in price (1.50 – 2.50 Euros). More than once I recall sitting at a nice meal and thinking to myself, “I don’t want to finish this, because I want to have enough room to eat a gyro in half-an hour.”

Perhaps I haven’t been to the right places and admittedly my sample size is small, but the tastiest gyros I had in Greece were much much better than any of the gyros I’ve had in the US. For comparison, I’m currently in Italy and I haven’t tasted a single piece of pizza that is as good as Pinnochios’s. More on that subject in a later post...