On a recent visit to the beautiful island of Samos I couldn’t wait to have a Greek salad with decent creamy, salty Feta – and we did every day. But this is your basic accompaniment – it’s the slightly unusual variants and use of herbs that make holiday meals here so memorable.
Georgiou and Katerina, our hosts at the Pleiades bungalow-style apartments at Votsalakia, near Marathokampos, have created a Rousseau-style garden complete with palms and bougainvillia with stunning views over the bay. Even their bar salads have so much flavour – is it the heat, the locally pressed olive oil, the setting, or the scattered garden herbs that makes it taste so good?
After a breakfast of creamy rice pudding with nutmeg topping (available in the supermarket) you can work up an appetite by climbing and swimming through the waterfalls at Potami – then climb up to the 100ft tree house to the bar and restaurant at the top. Note: iced water (delivered to every arrival) and a Mythos beer have never been more welcome.
Later in the square in Konteika we were served a free platter of meze to accompany our drinks and tempt us to stay for a main course or two. Hot veal and oregano balls plus chickpea balls (revithokeftedes), which are similar to falafel but flavoured with feta cheese and contain chopped parsley or oregano – these are pop-in-the-mouth size and fried in very hot oil, served with a few Kalamata or green olives – were simply heaven.
Our favourite restaurant though was in the craft village of Manolates where you eat beneath a canopy of vines, with multicoloured chairs, and drink the chilled, sweet white golden wine for which Samos is famous. Don’t knock it until you have tried it!
Almost like Oloroso sherry it is rich, deep and satisfying. The other big move in drinks is Café Freddo – a cold espresso or cappuccino that is frequently drunk by the locals.
Claire sampled some battered courgette flowers stuffed with feta and herbs.
It’s also worth the trip to The Taverna at the End of the World (warning: you can only get there in a hire car that you don’t care too much about – or walk for an hour and half in around 36° heat). Here we ate courgettes complete with flowers, stuffed with feta and herbs and baked in the lightest tempura batter. This was followed by fat red scorpionfish, and then a slice of the Greek classic orange cake (a tray bake but tasting almost like a rum baba). It is soaked at the base in something like Grand Marnier and rises to a feathery light sponge, sprinkled with citrus peel and sugar.
The trend to Greek-strained yogurt has been a worldwide success story in the last few years, but nowhere is it quite as creamy as on a Samos beach (you can even use it as after sun lotion but that would be a waste). Tirokafteri is a feta cheese dip made with olive oil, red wine vinegar and spicy pepper – and the herbal, tea plate-sized flatbreads topped with rosemary and rock salt are the perfect accompaniment.
Innovation R&D teams are busy finding dishes that will have mass appeal for our increasingly exotic taste buds – looks like a trip to the real Greece should be on the agenda.
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