Spent a week in Greece, and I have to say I was delighted overall with expanding my food knowledge of authentic Greek cuisine. It’s a shame that we have so little in the US that approaches what is available widely and cheaply over there. Pride of place really exists, and you have to go there to experience it.
Overall, the pastries are far more buttery and golden than what I have access to normally. From spanakopita to baklava, it was so much more a delight. The sweet stuff was less a sugar bomb.
And places that had an eye to modernity still retained their essential Greek characteristics. Impressive.
To begin at the beginning, the first thing we did after landing in Athens was rent a car to go to Meteora. But of course we first had to get something decent to eat. So we took guidance from culinarybackstreets.com and stopped first in the Athens suburb of Marousi.
The website lists a bunch of food shops and cafes to consider. They are concentrated in a vibrant area which was a bit old-fashioned and so satisfying to visit. We could have spent all day here flitting form one to another. But we decided to land on three spots:
First up was Chasiotis Nuts which is a dazzling sight inside. So many choices, especially for sweet concoctions that all looked so good. We showed restraint since there was more foraging to come and bought a bag of pistachios in the shell and a bag of roasted almonds.
Our next stop, Gaitanidis, is a dairy store. They no longer carry trays of baked yogurt as mentioned on Culinary Backstreets, but I was directed to a packaged yogurt that I honestly think is the best of my life:
It is from a small producer. A sheep’s milk yogurt with a thick layer of cream on top, it had surprisingly tight little curds throughout. Wonderful texture. I was in heaven just an hour into the trip.
Third stop was Panorama bakery for their namesake pastry. I asked for two panorama (a cone of pastry that gets filled-to-order with a vanilla crème) in Greek. The woman in the shop then asked me a question in Greek. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t immediately say ‘yes’ since I didn’t quite understand. After some reflection, she may have asked me if I wanted two kilos (I think they get a lot of business doing parties). The baker then appeared, whose English was as good as my Greek, and we finally figured out I only wanted two individual pastries. I wound up ordering four – considering the trouble I went to- and they were golden, wonderful and far less sweet than I expected.
Final stop was at a café for our first café freddo. I finally understood what my son was raving about from his trip here two summers ago. Spoiler Alert: was not our last café freddo.
After that, we were Meteora bound. To be continued……
