For better or for worse, upmarket restaurants in Greece mostly serve Real Greek food. If Creative Greek restaurants in Greece offering creative cuisine are to serve moussaka, then this has to be either in the shape of a minced meat and eggplant liquid poured into a martini glass or mixed with liquid nitrogen and morphed into ice cream. Greek chefs, for better or for worse, have fallen prey to the charms of molecular cuisine. New Greek cuisine is the inevitable fashion in Greece as nueva cocina has been in Spain and new Nordic cuisine in Denmark. An endless array of young Greek chefs who apply the techniques of molecular cuisine onto traditional recipes straight from their grandmothers’ recipe books flowed out of the kitchens of an older generation of New Greek cuisine chefs. Contemporary Greek cooking has taken the standard Greek recipes and fused them with exotic ingredients, turned them inside out, deconstructed them, foamed them, freeze dried them and spherified them, giving a definitely new form of Real Greek food.

In addition to Creative Greek cuisine restaurants, there has also been an explosion of Modern Greek restaurants in Greece. First of all, they are bistro-like restaurants, where young chefs create their own revolution by serving Greek food in a more recognizable form. There, moussaka is just moussaka, but the difference between these “bistros” and traditional Greek taverns is that in the former there is greater gastronomic sensitivity. Ingredients from the rich terroir of Greece are well sourced and there is precision in cooking. As for the wine, instead of the ubiquitous retsina of the past, superb barrique wines from Santorini, Nemea or Amynteo are served in proper glasses.

It is also worth mentioning that a great number of “neotaverns” have appeared in recent years, especially in Athens. These “modern Greek restaurants” not only try to recreate the atmosphere of the old taverns (whose number has alas been waning) in an “authentic manner” but also attempt to reproduce the flavour and the aroma of tavern food, ouzo and retsina included.

The most recent trend in modern Greek restaurants is their welcome discovery of local cuisine. People in the cities are going back to their roots by rediscovering the glorious gastronomy of Crete, Chios, Lemnos and the Peloponnese, a multifaceted cuisine that is based on local ingredients and a mix of recipes that reflects the turbulent history of Greece.

Whether it is in taverns or bistros, in local or “New Greek cuisine” restaurants, Greeks are becoming more conscious of their gastronomic heritage and this has created a food culture which the tourists may find more appealing than eating hummus in Plaka.

Every cuisine in the world is the sum of its parts, of its ingredients, in other words, those basic foods and flavor combinations that are the cook’s alphabet for both carrying on traditions and creating new dishes that are both authentic and contemporary. Greece is blessed with a wide gamut of basic Greek ingredients that flourish in this perfect Mediterranean climate. First and foremost, of course, are Greek olives and Greek olive oil, which are as basic as water to the Greeks. Greek fresh fruits, greens, and a wide array of fresh, seasonal vegetables (like Florina Peppers) and legumes are the mainstay of traditional Greek cooking, some with distinctly regional associations. Greece is also blessed with a wealth of “natural gourmet” products, foods that come from the land or sea and that have a long history, such as Greek honey, saffron (Krokos Kozani), Mastiha Chios, a great wealth of Greek herbs, both fresh and dried, and botargo as well as other preserved Greek fish and seafood specialties. The sea provides excellent conditions for organized fisheries, and aquaculture is one of the most important industries in Greece. Greeks have been consumers of Greek cheese and Greek yogurt from time immemorial. While feta is the best-known Greek cheese, there are at least 60 unique regional cheeses. Other specialty foods that define the Greek table and boast both historical and cultural depth are the sweet and savory Greek rusks, called paximadia.

Greeks have used Greek herbs as flavoring agent, tisane, and medicine from time immemorial. Indeed, even today, there is a well-established folk pharmacopoeia based on an often ingrained knowledge of the therapeutic powers of herbs. In cooking, most herbs are used in their dried form and the most beloved are oregano, thyme, savory, spearmint and mint. On the other hand Greeks enjoy some Greek herbs (dried) or aromatic plants as beverage by combination with hot or boiling water. There are many of them throughout the country, but the most famous are chamomile, sage and mountain tea, all well-known for their therapeutic benefits.

What would the Greek-Mediterranean cooking be without the plethora of healthy, delicious dishes based on Greek beans and legumes? The most ancient legumes are the lentil, chick pea, fava bean, and vetch, or split pea, all of which are still widely consumed in soups, stews and baked casseroles all over Greece. Greeks traditionally eat beans at least once a week. But New World beans have also become a staple and several Greek regions mainly in Macedonia, are home to beans with the coveted Protected Designation of Origin. Famed Greek giant beans (“gigantes”) and white beans of varying sizes grow well in the fertile wet soil of Greece’s rainy North.

Although the supply of fish in the Aegean and Mediterranean is dwindling, Greek fish and seafood continue to be important and beloved foods to the Greeks. It comes as no surprise, given the importance of fish on the Mediterranean table and Greeks’ affinity for it, that the country is one of the world leaders in fish farming, with sea bream, gilthead bream, sea bass, and trout the most popular and commercially successful species. On the seafood front, mussels have been farmed in Greece since antiquity, and northeastern coast of the mainland all the way up to the eastern fringes of Halkidiki and Thrace, which are laced with small coves, are closely associated with both mussel production and cookery. In the context of the Greek-Mediterranean diet, oily fish (not farmed), such as sardines, anchovies, and mackerels are an important part of the culinary traditions. But the most iconic of all Greek sea creatures and preparations is surely the octopus, grilled and stewed and savored in every part of the country and in almost every Greek restaurant in the world.

Arguably one of Greece’s most gourmet product, botargo (avgotaraho) is this country’s “caviar.” It is the salted, pressed roe of the grey mullet, “bafa” in Greek, which migrates en masse to the marshlands off the coast of western Greece and in some parts of Halkidiki, then attempts to migrate out to sea again to spawn. The mullets are caught on their exodus, at which point their swollen egg sacs are removed. When sufficiently dried and pressed, they are preserved in bee’s wax. Botargo (avgotaraho) is an ancient delicacy and has a rich, deep flavor and soft, unctuous texture. It is savored on its own in thin slices, sometimes with a twist of lemon and a crackling of black pepper. It is also excellent mixed into pasta and flavored with nothing more than exquisite Greek olive oil.

Greek cuisine is based on seasonality, simplicity, continuity, regionality, and healthfulness. The excellence of the country’s raw ingredients, cultivated in a perfect Mediterranean climate, has fostered a respect for the integrity of flavors, especially in traditional Greek cuisine and cooking, which are still highly seasonal.

Greek cuisine has ancient roots. Greek olive oil, Greek olives cured and flavored in much the same way over eons, Greek honey, wild foods –specially game birds and hares (or rabbits today)– herbs, shoots, buds, countless wild greens, ancient legumes, such as the fava bean, split pea, chick pea and lentil, fish and seafood, snails, nuts, sesame seeds, whole grains, and a few simple goat’s and sheep’s milk cheeses are the timeless ingredients of the Greek table. In all, Greek cuisine is sound in its basic values but also flexible enough to change with the times without losing its eternal spirit.

Greek cooking is simple and healthy! While there are time-consuming dishes such moussaka and pastitsio, there are very few complicated sauces and preparations in Greek cooking. The Greek flavor palette (garlic-oregano-lemon juice trinity, tomato sauces perfumed with cinnamon and allspice, Greek honey in various sweet and savory dishes, orange and fennel combined, and more) often lends antioxidants, minerals and other nutritional elements to every meal. In the traditional Greek Diet, essentially a traditional Mediterranean Diet, vegetables and legumes appear in countless main course dishes. Most main course vegetable dishes provide the daily recommended allowance for vegetables in the diet. Coupled with whole grain bread and a little cheese (protein), these meals are nutritionally complete. The wealth of vegetable main courses evolved out of the fasting traditions that dictate one abstain from all animal products for roughly half the year. Today Greeks are avid meat consumers but traditionally meat was limited, consumed as a festive food or combined with plant-based foods in stews and baked dishes. Extra virgin Greek olive oil makes so much Greek food healthy and Greeks consume it in copious amounts, around 22 liters per person annually. Extra virgin Greek olive oil is the basic cooking fat and the basic dressing, poured over all manner of salads and cooked dishes at the end.