Is Greek cuisine perhaps better than ever?

More and more new restaurants are serving up tradition and memory, made with local ingredients.

Zoi Parasidi, journalist

I recently had a conversation with the group of friends I often go out to eat with. We talked about whether we find it tiresome that new chefs and the menus they write describe in detail where every cheese they use comes from – that in interviews they talk about the small producers and farms they work with – and whether all of this is really necessary. Personally, I find these origin details very useful.

Back in April 1990, the amateur Greek folklorist Ilias Petropoulos wrote in an article titled “The National Fasoulada (Bean Soup)” that professional folklorists “never really identified the true cuisine of our grandmothers,” that he had heard the phrase “fasoulada is the food of the poor,” which he considered “unacceptably sloppy commentary.” He also emphasized that “Greek cuisine existed but was invisible” and that in reality it had been overshadowed by a tendency to show greater interest in foreign cuisines, displacing our own. Some 36 years on, things have changed drastically.

When Petropoulos was writing about fasoulada, it was rare to find traditional dishes on gastronomic menus – especially menus aspiring to awards. Today, however, we can sample recipes such as gemista, hortopita and sfakiani pita transformed into small, elegant bites that concentrate all their flavour.

The most successful restaurant ventures of recent years, the ones where it’s hard to book a table, revolve around the most familiar Greek dishes. They serve rustic, homestyle food, classic slow-cooked dishes that we once encountered only in family taverns, while their chefs often try to use ingredients from their own regions and highlight the flavours they grew up with. Sometimes they upgrade their raw ingredients, tinker with the recipes a little and give them a ‘current’ touch. Tradition has its charm, but the creativity it can inspire is equally enjoyable.

Petropoulos admitted that fasoulada, “seems like a laughable subject for study, yet through the trivial you reveal the important, and within the laughable you find the serious.” And this traditional Greek bean soup is now not only served outside the home, but has also become one of the most successful dishes produced by young cooks who look toward tradition while making use of their knowledge of techniques that can elevate even the simplest dishes.

The greens, legumes, chickpeas, trahanas, green beans and okra that we refused to eat as children have returned to take their rightful place as we seek them out on menus. Even the good chefs who have turned elsewhere, offering foreign cuisines, know that one of the most crucial elements in contemporary food is that ingredients should be – as far as possible – sourced locally, and that this should be communicated because it is appreciated. The best Mexican food I have eaten in Greece was served in Chania and made with Cretan products. And why not?

The biggest trend I see in food right now is a return to simplicity. And what is simpler than the dishes that awaken memories? The dishes we once ate at Sunday family meals and that we may not always have time to cook today, but we know they are waiting somewhere out there, prepared with care, reverence and knowledge.