In Greece, Putting Food First Aboard Wind Spirit

I always thought that all Greek salads were created equal. Our Athens-to-Athens Greek Isles trip aboard Wind Spirit this summer proved me wrong.

I'd never traveled to Greece, considered Europe's cradle. I'd ask friends about their trips there and they'd be rhapsodic about the ancient history, the glorious climate, the beaches, the white-washed homes, blue-domed churches. But the food? Don't expect to be wowed by Greek food, they'd say. Everywhere on the menu, it's horiatiki salata, "Greek salad" in the rest of the world: some version of a tomato and cucumber mixture with a block of feta on top was the sum total of the travel value you could expect.

So, it wasn't until my wife Mary and I went to Greece in June that I was able to judge for myself. Just how good was the food in Greece?

We cook Greek food at home in Brooklyn and yet what we experienced on our Greek Isles cruise was even better./Shutterstock

Our first stop in that quest was in Athens. Mary and I love to cook, and we do a lot with feta such as omelets with tomato and feta, a dash of oregano. Feta complet, we joke. But the quality of the fresh cheese we found in Athens vastly surpassed what we could get at home, even from our local food co-op, which meticulously sources fresh fruits, vegetables and cheeses. We are firm believers that a meal is only as good as its ingredients and in Greece, one amazing takeaway was the fragrance of the tomatoes, kalamata olives, even the crunch of the red onion. The combination made for a total taste experience that was so radiantly different from ordering a Greek salad for lunch during a busy workweek, when I was looking for quick plant-based nourishment. Not so in Greece, whether it was in a hole-in-the-wall diner in Athens, or during a meal aboard the Wind Spirit. There was just nothing ordinary about the horiatiki salata: It was a meal that was indeed "feta complet."

The fullness of that meaning was best on display during our tour aboard a catamaran across the caldera in Santorini. It was a glorious day of azure sky and dark blue waters, brilliantly sunny before the heat of the day. We were a small group of twelve travelers primed to hear about the history, both social and geological, in swimsuits and floppy hats. Here, the largest known volcano crater, now filled with seawater, last erupted three thousand six hundred years ago, our guide Vasia told us. After working up an appetite with a swim in the dark blue water, we were served hot barbecue skewers of either pork or chicken with the horiatiki salata. The first taste of lunch that day had me rethinking the common Greek salad. I couldn't imagine the tomatoes tasting any better. I savored every bite, from the green peppers to the red onions, touched by the delicate quality of the olive oil to the pungent kalamata olives to the rich, salty taste of the feta, which was nothing like what we cook with at home. The ingredients were everything, I thought as I literally scraped my plate for every last morsel. Purists will tell that the salad is only as fine as the ripeness of the tomatoes, which are most succulent in summer.

Maybe it wasn't just the quality of the food itself, I wondered, but the exhilaration of the open air and the sea aboard the catamaran. But other meals that we had in Greece and aboard the Wind Spirit were similarly simple - and fresh.

That's what stood out to me about our Wind Spirit experience on our circle tour of Greece: how much the country is "food first." The description of this global movement is how it "envisions a world in which all people have access to healthy, ecologically produced, and culturally appropriate food."

In Athens, writer Larry O'Connor tells us, he got his first glimmer of how simple - and fresh - a Greek salad could be./Shutterstock

As we traveled through the Greek Isles, I learned that Greek food was not a sea of sameness as I'd thought. What struck me was that it was all about the Blue Zone, which promotes a seemingly uninventive diet of legumes, tubers, grains, nuts and seeds. I imagined a simple diet of feta and honey and lemon was part and parcel of why it was that southern Europe was renowned for being a place where it wasn't uncommon at all for people to live to be one hundred years old - and older. When the quality of the food is this supreme in freshness and taste, then you really have to work at making a bland meal using these ingredients. That it becomes simply not possible to do so.

***

We had a seafood craving in Mykonos and decided we would head to a place called Kiki's Tavern some five miles out of town, for lunch. We made our way to the end of town and found a taxi stand. Soon our driver, Vasilis, arrived. He took us to a place down the end of a dirt road and pointed off down the hill. And there, tucked in the roadside brush, was our destination, Kiki's.

In the Greek Isles, you'll find numerous seaside restaurants, like our discovery of Kiki's in Mykonos, where the fabulous ambience is only overmatched by freshly prepared cuisine./Shutterstock

There were about a dozen people waiting for a table just minutes after opening, but a great bear of a man - yes, he, too, said his name was Vasilis - greeted us at the door.

"Can we put in our name?" Mary said, looking toward the switchback steps to the sea below, a tiny cove of a space called Agios Sostis Beach.

"Yes, but one of you will have to wait for your table," Vasilus said.

"That would be me," I said.

I took him up on the offer, and while a crowd of around me gathered. Maybe 15 tables of customers, sipping wine and chatting.

Only a half-hour later, I called Mary to come up from the beach, and we were taken to our table overlooking the sea. We took our time with the menu, deciding on the sea bass and the grilled calamari. There was an out of this world-looking salad bar, but on this one occasion I thought to give the horiatiki salata a pass. There was always tomorrow.

***

Jason Parker, Wind Spirit's general manager, couldn't hide his enthusiasm. We had just stepped off the tender, heading out on our tour of Mykonos, when Jason stopped us to share with him the bounty of dried blackberries and strawberries that he was carrying back to ship. While Mary and I were thrilled to be on the famed Greek island and would soon be out exploring the shops and cafes, Jason and a coterie of Wind Spirit staff were carting back their finds, in a spirit that mirrored our excitement.

On Wind Spirit, Jason Parker, its hotel general manager, loved to get off in port - and return to the ship with the freshest of finds./Larry O'Connor

"They will go so nicely with the fresh yogurt that we'd picked up earlier from an island farmer," Jason said, beaming. "You just wait!"

Jason inspired me to think of simple and divine. The next day for breakfast at the Veranda Cafe, I did as Jason guided me, scooping the dried fruit that he'd bought yesterday - blackberries, strawberries - that he'd brought back onboard. There were also figs and then I drizzled on some local honey. Thankfully, we were seven days onboard, to sample the bounty: and I'd add that each day I made sure to sample the grape leaves, the anchovies and the savory mushrooms.

No food event during our trip was more memorable, though, than the four-course meal we were served after we walked along the marble road in ancient Ephesus to its magnificently lit Celsius Library. This is a place earlier in the day when we learned during our guided tour that more than twelve thousand scrolls were housed here more than two millennia ago. Here, we had dinner under the stars before the illuminated façade of ancient statues. I stared in wonder at the ancient scripture carved into the ancient lintel above.

I was thinking of Freya Stark, the travel writer who in the early 1950s saw the library too, and the ruins surrounding it. Truly, I thought, this is a place where globalization set down its roots. In Stark's account, she describes Ephesus where all the races of Asia and the Aegean met and mingled;" here, she wrote, "it is impossible to touch the coast of Asia Minor without hitting five thousand years of history."

The Ephesus menu was to be the highlight of the trip and it didn't disappoint. It was, as few things are, just as advertised, with appetizers of eggplant in lemon sauce, purslane with yogurt, a savory veal stew, a steady flow of wine. No crowds. No rush. Delight in every detail. Before the elegantly lit library, we watched as families strolled the timeless stones above us. It is, of course, a cliché to say: It is something I'll never forget. But this definitely was.

***

When it came time to head back home to Brooklyn, Mary and I wanted a reminder of this incredible foodie journey to Greece aboard the Wind Spirit. That turned out to be an after-dinner surprise, a small glass of mastika liqueur, while sitting at the restaurant Attikos with a stunning rooftop view of the Acropolis. Mastika, we were told, comes from the resin of the trees on the Greek isle of Chios. It is the piney taste that continues to stay with us.

After our trip, greek yogurt with a dollop of honey is our new favorite way to start the day./Shutterstock

And that's only just the start of the culinary transformation from our Greek Isles trip. Our daily diet hasn't been quite the same since we've been home. In the morning, I'll stir in an extra dollop of Greek yogurt into my cereal along with a swirl of farmer's market honey. We buy blocks of feta and, using a New York Times recipe, make a sheet pan with broccolini, tomatoes, finished with the juice from fresh lemons, for lunch or an early dinner.

I had thought that after my first trip to the ancient world of the Odyssey, it would be the myths and wonder of the millennia-old ruins that would change me, that would be my big surprise. Rather, it was the food. And while the ingredients here at home in Brooklyn may not come close to matching the freshness and taste of Athens and the Greek isles, I can't recall a day since we've been back when we settled on a meal that could even remotely be considered uninspired. Maybe that's the biggest change of all.

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