Returned from Greece (after two prior weeks in Turkey, so a lot of eating info to recall and process. Think I am going to mostly limit myself to the most recommendable meals we ate for purposes of reporting - eating off season and especially midweek was a challenge in some places due to restaurants not being open but overall, with local recommendations we had a very good experience.
Im going to start out with [Athens], a brief visit at the end of our trip - 5 meals 3 worthy of note here. With the ample breakfasts at our hotels we mostly skipped lunches. Our top meals here were the last two.
Karamanlidika, https://www.facebook.com/karamanlidika.gr/improbably located on Ermou, was a charcuterie/restaurant offering the cuisine of Anatolian greeks from Cappadocia and Karaman. Although I had not enjoyed basturma and sujuk in the past, the pastirma served to us here in paper thin complimentary slices, along with nicely spiced cheese cubes, was absolutely delicious
, as were the lightly and aromatically spiced braised chickpeas with pastirma,
black sea salad with roasted eggplant, tomatoes and fine fresh cheese, to which fresh herbs were added
, finally their brick oven pizza-oid “prosfournia” breads filled with tomato and feta
The subtle Spicing goes on from mild chile heat into cumin, fenugreek and other middle eastern central asian flavors, elusive and pleasing. Recommended red wine by the glass was really excellent as well, also the complimentary yogurt and candied carrot dessert. Highly recommended!! I would have loved to explore thir big menu further. very gentle pricing and gruff waitress got friendly as we settled in.
Earlier that day we had lunched lightly at I Kritihttps://www.instagram.com/kriti.restaurant/, a 40-year old Cretan family restaurant near Omonia Square. I would love to be able to cook like these folks in addition to going back and eating through their menu.
- all of our three dishes, tender and beautifully seasoned roasted goat with lemon potatoes,
braised eggplant in a complex vegetable sauce
and mushrooms and greens in egg-lemon sauce
were delicious and showed real attention to detail in the kitchen - pure home style with a polish. The eggplant dish in particular, reminded me of a perfect vegetable ragu at Hosteria Giusti in Modena many years ago, a simple dish with perfect balance of flavors. Menu (not the same every day) good for both meat eaters and vegetarians.
