Sabbatikos

I loved the food across Greece. It is so much better than the Americanized Greek food we commonly see here. What makes a great Greek meal? Add one part atmospheric Greek taverna (preferably by beach), two parts wait for the sun to go down so and it cools off enough to have an appetite, combine fresh ingredients, a sense of culinary adventure, chilled wine (red or white), cold beer, and a little ouzo.

These are some images from some of our favorite meals.

Breakfast usually consisted of yogurt and honey with fruit (the honey in Greece is unbelievably flavorful) or open face omelets.

Lunch was often gyros which we didn’t eat nearly enough of.

Meals always started with fresh ingredients:

Before dinner happy hour would usually be on our boat or in a taverna with beer or wine and snacks.

Meals often started with appetizers such as saganaki or fried eggplant.

The Greek salad is a staple of every meal and always a cool crisp salty favorite.

The octopus was aways fresh and delicious.

The seafood was always fresh as well, but fish tended to be very expensive so we stuck with squid or prawns which were more affordable. Once we had bream, a rather bland whitefish.

The chicken souvlaki was another staple of each meal. At the BLO Taverna on Skopelos they had this incredible bacon wrapped souvlaki.

For dinner main courses we tended to share a variety of dishes to get tastes and flavors of the taverna and Greece.

Now that I’m back in Seattle I want to return to Panos Kleftiko and order more authentic items from their menu.