A convention celebrating Greek gastronomy gives one food writer the perfect opportunity to find out if such a thing exists. Here he shares an extract from his diary.
As I read my invitation to the Conference on Greek Gastronomy, the Greek etymology of the word 'oxymoron' seems quite apt – moussaka is hardly gastronomy. Has some El Bulli-inspired chef made tzatziki foam? The event is named Kerasma, which sounds like anti-fungal ointment but in fact means 'offering' and embodies Greek notions of hospitality.
Theo Kyriakou, owner of The Real Greek and one of the world's finest Greek cooks, hasn't heard of the conference. I decide to go anyway…
Day 1 On the plane, I start to read Courtesans & Fishcakes, a splendid book by James Davidson. He details the Athenians' "indecent obsession" with superb fish,
the citizens' appetite for the
heady wines of Chios, and the frankly licentious behaviour accompanying the pleasures of the table. This sounds like fun. The only fly in the kerasma is that this is the Athens of Aristophanes, Socrates and Plato. At midnight,
I scour the Plaka district in search of a fishmonger and a wine merchant. No luck: I settle for a cold beer and a plate of peanuts.
Day 2 The conference: lots of chaps in suits stand proudly next to
pots of honey, jars of olives and bottles of ouzo. Everybody smokes, sometimes two at a time.
I secrete several miniatures of
ouzo about my person in case the speeches prove dull; when the ashtrays are full, we are ushered into the lecture hall. By the fifth speaker, I am aware that I have created an aniseed-scented fug around me, and am attracting strange looks. The spirit of kerasma is obviously not to be taken too literally. Or before lunch.
Later, the lecture on 'The Miracle of Greek Aquaculture' sounds like a talk too many and I abscond. Theo mentioned a little bar called Ivis, in the run-down/new-trendy district of Psirri. "It is rather odd," he told me, and he is right. It is on a scruffy street corner and features an eight-foot high rusting figure of a female rollerskater on the wall. On the shelves are dozens of different ouzos. I like it already. In Greece, I'm told, one does not drink without eating, or eat without drinking. Or do either without smoking. From the menu (a list on the waitress's pad), I order horta (lemony, bitter wild greens with black-eyed beans), bastourma (richly spiced beef) and some excellent Armenian sausage, fried until soft but crisp-edged, smoky and fatty, for which ouzo is the perfect foil.
Day 3 The morning is spent in a three-hour round trip to taste two wines, which seems a little futile. Back at the conference hall, the organisers have assembled a gaggle of Greek chefs to cook their signature dishes. A 'buttermilk pasta mousse' tastes just as awful as it sounds. Christoforos Peskias, of 48 The Restaurant, has made fried calamari… with tzatziki foam. Even worse, it turns out he has worked at El Bulli. Actually, the calamari are delicious and the foam is well-flavoured, if a little pointless.
Back at the hotel, after another in-depth study of souvlaki joints,
I am late for the conference gala dinner. I haul myself into a dinner suit, as specified on the invitation, and jump in a taxi. On arrival, I find that I am one of only a dozen men dressed in black tie. The other eleven are waiters: I try desperately to find somebody to teach me
the Greek for "No, I am not a waiter, please find someone else to light your cigarette."
Day 4 Perhaps the greatest thing about Athens is that on a nice, sunny day, you can hop down to Piraeus, the local port, and catch
a hydrofoil to a nearby island. Barely an hour after leaving the hotel, therefore, I am sitting with
a coffee on the seafront in Aegina. I take a wander through the fish market and spend a pleasant hour or so sipping ouzo and losing at backgammon in a café in the backstreets, waiting for lunchtime.
Kerasma now coursing through my veins, I head back to the market for lunch at a small place simply called Psarataverna – the fish taverna. In front of me on the rickety little table is a basket of courgette fritters, a great salad of tomatoes and red onions, some wonderfully fresh skate, just floured and lightly fried, and some little fish, to be doused with lemon and eaten like whitebait. Unsure whether to catch the next boat or the one at six o'clock, I order a glass of Metaxa, which decides the issue.
That evening Back on the mainland, a friend and I meet for dinner at Thalatta, a famous fish restaurant. Mine host, a large chap wreathed in a pungent mix of stale tobacco smoke and strong aftershave, sidles over to explain the menu.
A little crab salad is proudly announced. It turns out to be a sort of Russian salad with shards of crabstick submerged in the dressing. Maybe crabsticks are
'the miracle of Greek aquaculture'.
At this point, we decide to go to 48 The Restaurant instead. I must say that my prejudice against avant-garde Greek cuisine is completely misplaced; at least in the case of Christoforos Peskias, who is a genius. The restaurant itself is a stunning sort of style temple, high-ceilinged, with deeply sexy lighting. Tables are adorned with fabulously sleek crockery; the diners are sleeker still. The menu is an audacious and beautiful reinvention of the Greek cooking that Peskias remembers from his childhood in Cyprus.
Sea bream is served as a carpaccio; Greek salad is deconstructed, with a powder of freeze-dried Feta; stifado is made, correctly, with hare and is meltingly tender. Puddings are equally toothsome, the Greek wines a revelation, and, as in all the best places, there's a complete lack of snobbishness and pretension.
I still have one more meal to eat tonight. On no account, Theo has told me, should I miss the patsas (tripe soup) served in the middle of the night at the central meat market. I'm not a huge fan of tripe, and it is with some trepidation
that I make my way through the market, huge sides of beef and
tiny spring lambs either side of me and the rich scent of blood and sawdust hanging thickly in the air.
Epeiros is a spotless, brightly lit place with the most extraordinary clientele: some are butchers in blue boiler suits; others are dressed to the nines. Most of them are eating tripe soup. I join them, adding chilli flakes and vinegar in the approved fashion, which at least gives the pallid broth a couple of flavours other than tripe. Ouzo helps, too, and by the end of the bowl the life-giving properties ascribed to patsas actually seem plausible. The woman next to me winks as she slurps and smokes, and my kerasma is complete.