World Travel 2013-2014, Salt Overload, Greek Food

What can I say, I was a bit disappointed with Greek food. I was looking forward to plenty of fresh salads and delicious food, and what we got wasn’t quite that. Personally, I found the food in Greece to be a lot more expensive and lower quality than I expected (with a huge amount of salt added!).

Athens wasn’t so bad, but Santorini in particular was pretty sad. It might have been better if we had been visiting the restaurants every night, but there’s only so far a backpacker budget can stretch – and 20 euro mains isn’t in our daily budget.

Our final day in Santorini we decided to have lunch out at a cafe, and found a little * on the menu. After glancing all the way to the bottom of the menu we found the word ‘frozen’ next to the corresponding *. Frozen I thought. Hmm. Why is that even on a menu?!?! Definitely not paying 10 euro for frozen chicken – so off we trudged to the local supermarket instead. I think Greece is one of the few countries were I much preferred eating food from the supermarket than the cafes or restaurants.

Worse meal of the trip has to go to a cafe in Santorini (not the same one with the ‘frozen’ on the menu though). Here’s Takeshi’s very appetising meal (maybe if you only like a few chunks of meat with fries)…

Shifado, Santorini, Greece

Mmm, and microwave Moussaka. As soon as I heard the microwave ding I knew this wasn’t going to be a fantastic meal…

Microwave Moussaka, Santorini, Greece

Oh, and the coffee was really bitter as well which I’m not fond of. We tried out the frappes as I’d heard that they were a Greek creation and were supposed to be very good. A ‘normal’ frappe is just instant coffee over ice though (and very bitter even with sugar). We thought maybe we just picked a bad spot so tried again, this time with a cold cappuccino instead. Nup, still very bitter. They are drinkable provided you whip as much of the foam into the coffee as possible (and make sure you keep whipping it, as it will seperate) but not overly pleasant.

We did have some nice food (the yogurt with honey and walnuts was nice, as was the prepackaged sandwiches and salads we picked up for our boat ride to Santorini) but in general the food was pretty poor quality and very salty. I think I’ll pass on the Greek food, and instead enjoy the delicious (and fresh!) Greek food from Cafe Astros in Adelaide instead!