Eating in Greece

Food Friends & Hunger Enemies:

As close tab-keepers on my life, many of you are undoubtedly aware that I have spent the better part of the last three weeks on The Continent. Specifically, I spent one week in the southern portion of mainland Greece before being joined by Food Associate DC for a weeklong romp through the Greek Islands, and now I am in Italy arcing my way from Milan to Rome by way of Venice, Bologna, and Florence.

Today I will give my thoughts on Greek eating habits.

Before I go any further, I would like to thank to Jack and SC for working with me to create a program, outside of the formal Guest Foodreporter Scholars program, that would allow me to post my thoughts and observations in a two-or-three-then-off style. As always, they were exquisite gentlemen to deal with.

Greece is a lifestyle country. Eating on a typical Greek day begins with a light breakfast – usually bread and coffee. The bread is served with marmalade and jams and often the breadbasket I was given included a chocolate croissant. The croissant was always delicious and about half the size of the croissants I have had in the US. As for the coffee, the standard is the terrible instant coffee Nescafe. One can also order Greek coffee, which is not bad, but is something of a sludge. Obviously, I was not crazy about either of the last two options, and couldn’t help but notice that even in a world where I can coffee beans shit out of monkeys (DC and I saw something on CNN about this*), I can not recall having ever seen Greek coffee or Nescafe on a menu. Fortunately, the Greeks also produce some good coffee and one must explicitly order it by asking for “drip coffee.” MMW will be pleased to hear that yogurt with honey is also a popular breakfast. It is particularly delicious as the Greek yogurt is a little thicker and more cheese-like than the yogurt I have eaten my whole life.

Lunch is a drawn out affair for the Greeks usually taken between two and five in the afternoon at a taverna. From what I saw and heard it is usually eaten tapas style, with a lunch group ordering a number of small dishes and sharing. There are quite a few spreads that are meant to be eaten with the provided bread. Tzasiki comes to mind. I never saw hummus or tabouli on a menu. I also, to my surprise, never saw a plate of olives on a menu.

Dinner is typically eaten between ten and midnight. Again most people seemed to be eating tapas style, but more substantial entrees are also ordered. With this meal people also drink wine. The house wine at most tavernas is pretty cheap and often free. Those familiar with high school science know that 1 milliliter of water weighs one gram. Being mostly water, this holds for wine as well and so half a liter of wine is often listed as half a kilogram of wine. Ordering alcohol using a weight is a singular pleasure.

It should be noted that I often saw people drinking at lunch, but I’m not sure if that was the norm or if I was observing tourists or Greeks on vacation.

After the meal, the Greeks drink coffee and then around midnight go out to bars. And going out to bars is not just limited to young Greeks, I saw people in their 40 out drinking and talking until after one am. Younger Greeks are out even later. In Athens, I was at bars at two-thirty in the morning that were still crowded. An American friend who was doing one of his medical school rotations in Greece told me that he had been out until six am a couple of times on weeknights.

The long lunches and late nights of drinking made me wonder: do the Greeks ever get anything done? As it turns out the Greek economy is actually pretty robust but not in phenomenal shape. Additionally, there might be two Greeces that differ gastronomically in how they take lunch.

Greece is the 27^th richest country in the world and their economy grew at a sprightly 4.7% in 2004. Furthermore, 70% of the Greek economy is in providing services. It appears that despite their long lunches and late nights the Greeks are not only productive, they are figuring out how to become even more productive. And they are doing so faster than any of the other large EU countries.**

Is this really possible? Was there some ancient research done by Hippocrates, Dionysus, et. al. on hangover prevention? Probably. No, definitely. However that may not explain everything. Scrolling a little bit further down the Wikipedia page allows me to see that Greece has an unemployment rate of ~10% and one figure I saw noted that 40% of Greeks worked in the public sector.***

I was told by pretty much everyone I asked in Greece, that the workers in the public sector have light schedules; I was told that they leave by two PM every day to go have lunch and never go back to the office. One night in Athens, I crashed at the apartment of a guy who was working on some sort of collaboration between the Greek and Italian governments – a public sector job. He told me he went in to work maybe two days a week for a total of about eight hours a week.

So, it appears that while Greece certainly has a lifestyle culture, only 50% of the people are regular participants in it. The other half of the people jump in whenever they can. Given the larger numbers of jackets and ties I saw late-night at bars than I saw at lunchtime tavernas, I’m guessing they hard-workers do most of their catching up while drinking at night. I wish I had some statistics on per capita alcohol consumption in Greece versus the US.

When did this laid back slow-eating frequent drinking culture develop? Did Aristotle and Socrates do their philosophizing over long lunches? I have no idea. Look, I wasn’t in Greece for that long. I’m mostly jumping to conclusions here.

I’ll put another post up soon talking about specific foods and it just might include photos.

* They may not have been monkeys but it was some sort of animal. A human? No, that doesn’t make too much sense; people could do that themselves with just regular beans purchased from the store. I’m now leaning back towards monkeys.

** Note: All of the info in this paragraph comes from Wikipedia and I have not bothered to double-check it. All of this information and thus my conclusions could be wildly incorrect, the result of a drunk Athenian central banker with a DSL connection.

*** I don’t even remember where I saw the figure on Greeks working in the public sector. But don’t discount the information so quickly. I remember I saw it on a website. Perhaps Vali’s Views?