Our first day in Greece was full of wonderful food! We began with a Greek coffee on the rooftop of our hotel overlooking the Parthenon – there is no way you can go wrong there! The coffee is poured into small espresso cups but the taste is nothing like espresso. It is a strong, slightly thick and sweet coffee. It helped give us the jolt we needed after our long flight from the US.
For the late afternoon, we booked a food tour with a guide who took us to places we would never have found on our own – the areas where the locals eat – which is exactly what we wanted! We began at a small café, Kafeneio Ivis, on a beautiful side street in the heart of the Psirri neighborhood. We enjoyed an eggplant salad, sausage, and grilled cheese fried with egg or saganaki as it is prepared on the island of Astypalea. This meal was served with fresh hot bread and local red wine.
Our next food stop came with a culinary lesson. Do you know the difference between a gyro and a souvlaki? While they are basically the same, the difference is the way they are cooked. The meat for a gyro is cooked on a rotating cone (gyro means turn) and can be a combination of pork, chicken and lamb while a souvlaki is meat that is prepared on a skewer (souvia means spit). And it was necessary that we tried both at TsiknaBoom and we voted for both of them!
Our final tasting was at bakery and pie (as in pizza) restaurant, Bougatsadiko, where we enjoyed a wonderful dessert prepared in handmade filo – bougatsa, think of it as the custard of a warm homemade banana pudding inside freshly homemade filo – and a cappuccino to end our evening. And we did all this on day one! I think I’m loving Greek food!
