What do people eat in Greece?
Greeks eat a small breakfast, a big home cooked lunch around 14:00 and a late dinner, often after 21:00, shared from plates in the middle of the table.
Typical dishes and their calories
Breakfast
Breakfast is small and quick. Many people have a coffee with a koulouri, a sesame bread ring of about 270 kcal, or a slice of bougatsa or tiropita from the bakery on the way to work. At home it can be Greek yoghurt with honey and walnuts.
Lunch
Lunch is the main meal, usually between 14:00 and 15:00. It is home cooking: gemista (tomatoes and peppers stuffed with rice), fasolada bean soup, gigantes beans in tomato sauce or a stew like stifado. A Greek salad and bread come with almost everything.
Dinner
Dinner at home is often light and seldom before 21:00. Going out to a taverna with friends usually starts around 22:00, with plates shared in the middle of the table: grilled fish or meat, moussaka (about 520 kcal a portion), salads and dips. A meal like this can last for hours.
Starters
Mezedes are small plates eaten with a drink, because in Greece people rarely drink without food. Typical are tzatziki, dolmades (vine leaves stuffed with rice), fried saganaki cheese, fava (a yellow split pea purée) and grilled octopus. Two heaped spoons of tzatziki are about 55 kcal.
Desserts
After a meal many families just have fresh fruit. Sweets come from the zacharoplasteio, the pastry shop, boxed to take home: baklava, galaktoboureko (custard in filo with syrup) and loukoumades, small fried dough balls with honey. Many tavernas bring a little dessert or fruit at the end.
Drinks
Iced coffee is the drink for most of the year. The frappé, instant coffee shaken with ice, was invented at the Thessaloniki fair in 1957, and freddo espresso is now just as common. With meze people drink ouzo, an anise spirit that turns cloudy with water, tsipouro, or retsina, a white wine with pine resin.
Street food
Souvlaki and gyros are the everyday fast food: grilled pork or chicken in a pita with tomato, onion, tzatziki and often chips inside, about 600 kcal for a gyros pita. Koulouri sellers stand on street corners in the morning, and bakeries sell spanakopita, spinach and feta pie, all day.
Normal there, odd elsewhere
Dinner at 22:00 is normal, also for families with children in summer. One frappé can be sipped slowly for two hours at a café. A Greek salad, horiatiki, has no lettuce and comes with a whole slab of feta on top. And ouzo is almost never drunk without something to eat.