Greece: The Food

When I started blogging and tweeting about taking this trip to Greece I received a lot of comments telling me how much I was going to love the food.  Strangely I hadn’t expected that.  My last trip to Europe didn’t leave me feeling very warm and fuzzy about the cuisine.  Of course, that was 10 years ago before I developed taste buds…and of course, none of those countries served me Greek Salad.

You have never had a tomato until you’ve had a fresh Greek grown tomato.  Trust me.  And if anyone ever serves me a Greek Salad without a SLAB of amazing feta cheese on top of it again, I might cry. 

We seriously had at least one, if not two, Greek Salads every day of our trip.

We also ate a whole lot of tzatziki.  The cucumbers were almost as epic as the tomatoes.  And the olives.  Until we discovered Fava Dip on Santorini…I’m still dreaming about that deliciousness.

Breakfasts were almost all included with our hotels (unless we had a godforsaken early ferry that had us out the door before it was served).  They ranged from quite good (Mykonos) to good enough (Athens)…always with coffee, fake OJ, some kind of cheese, some kind of egg, bread, Corn Flakes, and usually the crazy thick yogurt.

Aside from the bazillion Euros we spent on bottled water (it actually wasn’t that expensive, we just drank a lot of it) we kept our energy up with sodas and coffee drinks.  Nothing hits the spot at 3pm like a frosty cold can of Coke….seriously…it saved my life (from headaches) at least twice.  And nothing beats lying on the beach than having a Frappe (iced cappuccino) delivered right to your lounge chair.

Of course, we never let a dinner go by without wine…some good, some awful or a frosty cold beer, or whatever other boozy bevvie struck our fancy.

We found some healthy snacks.

And lots and lots of carbs.  Do you know the Greeks bring you bread with every meal?  Oh, you can say no…but why would you want to?!

Gyro pita, pistatsio, roast chicken with lemony potatoes, souvlaki with rice.

Beach pizza.  Holy delicious. 

Oh pasta!  Risotto.  More pasta!

And someone finally fed me eggplant I loved.  Probably because it was stuffed with cheese and other amazingness and cooked in some kind of clay oven I’ll never find anywhere outside of Sifnos.

Sifnian food spoiled us.  We arrived on a Sunday and were presented with a home cooked chick pea “Sunday Stew” at the restaurant in our hotel.  Best thing we ate on the whole trip…I swear.  Now if only one of us had purchased the required clay pot for cooking this up ourselves…

Oh, and dessert.  Thank God we didn’t jump on the baklava bandwagon until our last night on Santorini.  If we’d tried it sooner we may very well have eaten it for dinner every night.

Instead, we only did that once.  :)

Everyone who told me the food would be amazing….you were right.  We enjoyed every bite of every thing we had on the whole trip.  Greek Salad has been forever ruined for me.  I guess I’ll just have to go back!