It’s 8:30am New Year’s Day and I have just come back from a typical night in Athens, Greece. A night that starts anywhere from 9:00-11:00pm and ends anywhere from 3:00–7:00am. The Greeks live life well with very long nights of drinking, eating, dancing, and shooting the shit. It’s a very sexy country with gorgeous food and delicious girls.
New Years Eve is really big here… bigger than Christmas. It’s a family affair. Gifts are given to children and Cab drivers are home before midnight to be with their families. I am staying with relatives at an area known as Moschato, which is 5 subway stops from downtown Athens. Before hitting the town, my relatives threw a party for family and friends. This family gathering started around 11.00pm. Homemade wine flowed like water, and many Greek bites were consumed – from meatballs and braised pork to roasted shrimp wrapped in proscuitto with red pepper (my contribution) and cheese pies. Around 3:00am a band of 20/30-something friends and family left the party for a bar in Gazi, the “gay friendly” district, and partied until 7:30 AM. However, the night wasn’t over. We went to the Athens version of early-morning, after-drinking, eating at a soulvaki roach coach. Soulvaki is Greek fast food. Served either as skewers or in a sandwich, it’s grilled beef, pork or chicken with onions, tomatoes and/or other veggies and a yogurt, cucumber, garlic and lemon sauce (Tzatziki). It can be very good, but this early morning breakfast was just crap. Soulvaki in Athens is like pizza in New York, sausage in Chicago or tacos in Los Angeles.
I am on a vacation in Athens, Greece for two weeks. It’s a very large city with a plethora of history in the form of ancient ruins, food and wine. The quality of the food products is wonderful for the most part. No hormones in their meats or poultry, which makes for very tasty lamb, beef, chicken, pork and turkey. Passionately prepared meals by my aunt, the matriarch and best cook of the family (we call her the “general”), have been very tantalizing. Here is just a short list of some of the culinary delights she has created:
Lamb chops to die for;
Stuffed eggplant that melts in your mouth with every bite;
Roasted pork with a celery and lemon sauce. It’s insane!
Roasted lamb!
Roasted turkey that was 2nd best turkey I have ever had.
Cheese pie (Tiropita)
Roasted potatoes…
So there hasn’t been a need to dine out much, but when we do it’s an experience. Continued….
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