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Restaurants
Greek food is popular all over the world and known for its quality, but no where is the food so good as in Greece itself. The biggest concentration of good restaurants in Athens is in the Plaka and Psiri areas, but there are excellent ones spread all over the city and suburbs. Nearly all restaurants have an outdoor seating area, and people tend to eat outside almost all the time during the months from May to October. The traditional procedure when visiting a restaurant and deciding what to order is that you will be shown directly into the kitchen to see what is on offer. There will usually be a big table full of steaming pots, each with a different dish. Customers pick what looks most appealing to them, and order by telling this right to the cook. Many restaurants will also show their meats, fish and vegetables to you before you order so that you can see how fresh they are. Typically, Greek restaurants use ingredients that are extremely fresh, though sometimes the fish has been frozen. The dining experience in Athens and the rest of Greece is very relaxed. The waiters never rush you, and even if a restuarant is very crowded, they will try to make room for another table. The city has a wide variety of restaurants to choose from, including old traditional travernas that have been in business for a hundred years, trendy experimental restaurants, and many different national cuisines are featured.
The Greek Cuisine
Greek meals usually begin with mezedes or appetizers, often served with a traditional liquour like ouzo or tsipouro. Meat is a major part of Greek cuisine, and is featured in the majority of the country’s main dishes. Seafood is common as well, as the country has so much sea coast, and fresh vegetables are a must in almost all meals. Greek cuisine does not use many strong spices, and the natural food flavours are enhanced by the way the ingredients are combined and by skillful preparation. Some typical Greek main courses that have become world famous are moussaka and pastitsio. They are both baked dished with minced beef and a bechamel topping, the former on a base of potatoes and topped with aubergines and onions, and the latter a pasta dish with onions and tomato sauce. There is also paidakia, grilled lamb’s ribs served with lemon, and kokretsi, a particularly famous dish which is wrapped and roasted entrails of lamb, also served with a lot of lemon.
Olives and olive oil are staples of Greek cuisine, and foreigners are often astounded by the wide variety of olives available in Greece. There are dozens of both green (unripe) and black (ripe) olives, named after the regions from which they come, and each with a very unique flavour. Bread is also of great importance to any Greek meal, and one of the most common kinds of appetizer is chunks of bread dipped in olive oil or other sauces. There are different breads for different occasions, and bakeries are probably the busiest shops in Greece. Many village bakeries still use wood burning stoves and make traditional brown bread from centuries-old recipes.
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