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all greek food is great i love the dolmades, kleftico and souvlaki. pick up a brochure for kefalonia it is one one of the most beautiful of the greek islands!  ;) :D ;D

Quote from: Curry on January 19, 2007, 22:43:10
A thread on food is always guaranteed to do well eh?

I will give the almonds a miss ... ditto on the honey ...

everything else sounds brilliant ... hmmm no one has mentioned patsas ...

For Patsa go to the Athens meat market on Athinas Street.  Inside they have a little taverna where all the buchers eat. (If you can stand the smell of a huge butchers without aircon)
I lived there for ten years and as everyone says, if the locals eat there then it's a good bet.
The trouble with touristy places is that they have this "tourist" greek menu that is so far from the real thing.
I've heard of loads of tourists who go home complaining about the food when they haven't even had anything authentic

Ah.  The joy of having a Greek Cyp as a best friend at school.  I used to regularly go to hers for lunch and tea and YUMYUM.  Dolmades like I have never had before, or since.

Quote from: tim on January 22, 2007, 09:35:03
However much you enjoy Ouzo with your meals, DON'T rush to bring some home. Like Genever, I find that it just doesn't work at home.

Tim, you speak for yourself!!  We adore ouzo and bring it home to have with our own attempts at cooking Greek food.

Curry, Athens is really worth a visit for a few days especially to see the huge meat and vegetable markets.  The food can vary but we found that the further we walked away from the Plaza, the better the food in the tavernas. 

Of the islands, we really enjoyed Thassos and Paros (not to be confused with Paras).  On both these islands the coastline is unspoilt with little fishing boats in small harbours and locals sitting mending their nets.  Some parts of these islands have changed very little over the centuries.   It is easy to make your own way in Greece and transport is much cheaper than at home.  If you go slightly off season (May, June or early September) you should not need to book accommodation so you can be really flexible and if you don't like a place, move on to somewhere else.  I have visited Aegina but found that a bit barren and Andros did not really feel Greek!  I visited Corfu over 30 years ago and fear it would be too commercialised these days. 

The Pelion area looks very beautiful on this web site and we hope to visit there next year.
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:zhSoepv_jzkJ:www.greecetravel.com/pelion/+pelion&hl=en

There is always fresh seafood to be had in Greece and they certainly know how to cook courgettes and aubergines.  We love Greek food and adore the country.  You will need to research your proposed area well as there are some areas/islands that are frequented by the British lager brigade.  Enjoy your planning and let us know where you have decided to go. 

We stayed in a small hotel in Athens but on the islands have rented ensuite rooms with balconies.  These are the views from our apartment on Paros. 

we went to the island of evia, off athens coast in september, breathtaking, apparently it's the island the greeks go to for their holidays, lots of people only speak a smattering of english and the food's phenomenal,  ;D

OK - I was wrong with Ouzo?

So the one thing you MUST bring home is ......... BLEEP help me ( you read the papers today about film censorship?) ...........the nuts on a string dipped in grape juice......sojuko or similar - can't find a lead.

Our favourite sweetmeat.

more piccies, evia this time  ;D

Oh lovely Thassos.  My darling and I spent our first holiday there together.  We had only known each other a short while, and it was love.  We should have named our daughter after the island!! ::)

Not sure your daughter would have appreciated that, but the greek islands reek of romanticism, and I have not even been there yet (although I have watched Shirley Valentine !!!).

PS on my holiday saga, details have now been discussed, and the first two choices are both on Crete, so that sounds extremely probable ...

Derek :)

Doesn't the lovely Ruud favour Crete??

Ruud?

Tim the nuts sound divine, I will keep my eye open for them !

Derek :)

They set in a bumpy sort of sausage of turkish delightish jelly!

Crete one of my favourites I can smell the kleftico as we speak. Another tip curry apart from learning some basic lingo, is when ordering a kleftico,  if that takes your preference is to order it in the afternoon to eat in the evening, then you know its been slowly cooking in a traditional clay oven all afternoon in a real taverna. Ahh brings back memories think I'll dig out my photo's. ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D

Quote from: manicscousers on January 27, 2007, 19:02:31
we went to the island of evia, off athens coast in september, breathtaking, apparently it's the island the greeks go to for their holidays, lots of people only speak a smattering of english and the food's phenomenal,  ;D

We stayed near Evia on Andros, an island frequented by wealthy Greeks on holiday.  The island was pretty but we didn't find any small fishing boats bobbing on the water or any locals going about their work in the countryside on donkeys.  The simple life is what we enjoy most in Greece and unfortunately, Andros didn't have it. 

Cornykev, kleftiko........mmmmmmmmmm... one of my favourite Greek meat dishes.  I haven't been to Crete but the best taverna we found in Athens was run by a Cretian gentleman. 

I can't remember having chips very often in Greece but I suppose they were there to be ordered.  I always choose a Greek salad to accompany my meat dish.

All this talk about Greece is making me want to go there again.  Roll on 2008 when my OH is 60.  We will be going there to celebrate his birthday.   

I don't think anyone has mentioned Greek music yet.  I play my CD's to take me back to those lovely holidays.

Only been to Corfu for a short holiday.  The food was wonderful, but one thing I would not buy again is retsina - yeeeeeeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuk.  Having ordered a bottle of wine to go with our meal.  It was vile, foul, nasty tasting, yeuk!!  By gum, it took a lot of swallowing.  Took us ages to finish the bottle.  (Based on the ancient english principle, if you've bought it you should drink it all).

I would agree with Tim, whilst we enjoyed ouzo while we were on Corfu, it didn't taste so good in the cold light of an English Summer's day.

Sangria, ouzo, et al, drinks that tasted so fantastic while you were on holiday, don't live up to their reputations when brought home, no matter how hard you try to recreate the holiday spirit.

Quote from: valmarg on January 28, 2007, 21:48:03
Sangria, ouzo, et al, drinks that tasted so fantastic while you were on holiday, don't live up to their reputations when brought home, no matter how hard you try to recreate the holiday spirit.

Local french wines are another example - they taste great when cooking the evening meal in a fabulous rustic gite, but taste like vinegar when back home !!!
I can remember adoring Sangria - I used to fill up my water bottle with it and tell my wife it was Vimto ... :D

Derek :)