Years had gone by, maybe more than a decade, since the last time I had visited Rena tis Ftelias, one of the best-known Greek restaurants in Athens. Rena Tolia is the chef-owner. She’s a self-made beacon of traditional Greek cuisine and author of several cookbooks. The place had not changed much. Ornate, comfortable furnishings...
This business of reviewing restaurants usually sounds more glamorous than it is. Most of the time, people who eat for a living end up eating a lot of very mediocre meals and a few very good ones in any given year. This year, 2011, got off to a great start for me with a...
Crisis time may not be the ideal season for visiting one of Greece’s finest and priciest restaurants, Varoulko, but a friend was taking me to dinner and offered to take me there. How could I say no? It had, indeed, been several years since I had savored the foods of one of my favorite...
I hadn’t been up to Kifissia to catch up with chef Nena Ismirnoglou at Gefseis in close to two years. One recent visit on a Friday night made me angry at myself for not being hungry enough to savor more of this lovely restaurant’s delicious food. Nena, gourmet earth mother, takes the comforting flavors...
It’s not every day I splurge on a meal at Vardis, one of several Michelin-starred restaurants in Athens, but I did a few nights ago with friends. I had been wanting to try the cooking of the young chef Asterios Koustoudis for a while, having heard lots and even written some about him. On...
It’s a sad fact that residents of Santorini have done more to destroy the island than earthquakes ever could and sadder still that they continue to rip the soul out of this magical place by erecting ever more spectacularly ugly buildings. Get rid of the tour buses that choke local roads, scale things down...
Visit us on the Blue Zone island Ikaria, where people have the longest life spans in the world, for a week of glorious Greek cooking classes in an ancient Greek-island village.
