Travel Europe

Greek Food/Greek Specialties

Greek traditional cuisine includes a lot of baked, fried, and cheesy dishes. Traditional Greek meal consists not of just a salad and main dish but of a selection of cold/hot appetizers – Orektika or Mezedas. Those include:

Horiatiki – Greek salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, olives and feta cheese

Tarama Salata – a pink dip (from fish eggs, bread or potatoes, lemon and whatever secret ingredients) that you eat with bread

Tzatziki – a creamy dip from yoghurt, cucumber and garlic

Spanakopita – Pie from crispy dough with spinach and cheese filling

Tyropita – pie with cheese filling

Tomatokeftedes – fried tomato balls

Cheese Saganaki – fried cheese

Some other Greek specialties include:

Dolmadakia – grape leaves stuffed with rice or rice and meat

Souvlaki – barbecued meet

Mousaka – pie with meat that resembles lasagna. Caution, many tourists believe that Mousaka is a typical Greek dish, it is NOT! Greeks rarely eat Mousaka and when they do, it is usually at home and not in a restaurant or taverna. Mousaka is considered a very simple and rather basic dish, probably like American’s consider meat loaf and mashed potatoes. Generally, if you see Mousaka on the menu, you know that the restaurant is targeting tourists and probably not Greeks.

For a dessert try EkMek Kadaif (cake with very rich ice cream or whipped cream on top), Baklava (rich pastry with honey and nuts) or Greek Yoghurt with honey. The place to get the best EkMek, as many Athenians know, is from one of the cafes in Halandri Square, in the north of Athens.

And you definitely should try Frappe – a special Greek cold whipped coffee with ice. It is really rare that you will get a good one anywhere else but Greece.