I’m still wishing I was back on holidays, and so I haven’t run out of material yet for writing about the trip on the blog, especially because I haven’t even started talking about Greece! We were in Greece for about 2 weeks of our trip, and although for one week we were on a boat eating more Turkish style food (absolutely delicious…I mean who doesn’t want their own private chef cooking up a storm for every meal?) the second week we spent in Crete enjoying all the Greek food on offer. Crete is well known for its food and wine in Greece, and being the second biggest Greek island you can see why. There is so much land for fruit, vegetables and animals to thrive off, and they certainly take their food seriously here as a result. I don’t think we had one meal that I thought was average, I was seriously in heaven! If you are thinking of going to Greece, I can’t recommend this island more highly.
So because the food was so unbelievably good, I decided it was high time I wrote about it on my blog. It was really hard to decide which 5 things to feature because of this, but I decided instead to roll them up into larger groups, of which most are things you can find all over Greece. There was so much good food to choose from, and so I didn’t really know where to start. But hopefully this helps you when you are planning your trip!
Saganaki
The first on my list is Saganaki because I am obsessed with cheese. Usually in Australia I would be a sucker for haloumi, and this is something you can find on most Greek menus. But we learnt while we were over there that this isn’t a widely available cheese because it actually comes from Cyprus, not Greece! When we learnt this from a waiter, it suddenly made sense why this wasn’t an option. But luckily I had a substitute in Saganaki, which we ate pretty much every time we found it.
I’ve learnt since coming back to Australia that Saganaki is actually a style of cooking rather than a cheese variety, which makes a lot more sense now because there was such a wide variety that we experienced in our travels. They will usually serve it to you on a sizzling grill plate still melting, and you eat it hot before it goes tough. That being said though, we also had it come out on a plate, and also come out in pastry! So there really isn’t any right or wrong when it comes to this cheese. What I loved most though was how gooey it becomes on the grill, and how salty the flavours are. I actually think I know prefer this to haloumi, which is really saying something!
Crete has many varieties of cheese and there is one type that they usually put on the grill in the saganaki style. I had it written down as katsohiri cheese but when I’ve looked that up online I can’t seem to find it, nor can I find it at my local Greek food store. If anyone knows of this type of cheese, please let me know! It was round rather than the traditional saganaki wedge, but had the same salty flavour and gooey texture. It was probably my favourite type of saganaki we had on the whole trip! Other honourable mentions were the saganaki at Oloundi in Elounda which came out on a sizzling grill that they poured cognac over and lit on fire at the table! This served with lemon was absolute heaven. Another interesting take on saganaki we had was one wrapped in pastry and covered in honey. The sweetness of the honey went perfectly with the saltiness of the cheese! If you are keen to try this take, head to Gioma Meze at Agios Nikolaos.
No matter which style it comes in, I am telling you saganaki is always a good idea!
Everything we ate at Peskesi in Crete
We had a day in Heraklion to see the Minoan palace and museum, and for lunch we were taking to Peskesi. This is the sort of restaurant that a tourist would never stumble across as it is down a few side streets, but we are so glad it was recommended to us, especially me as I really think it was one of the best meals, if not the best, of the whole trip. I’ve seen since that this is quite a popular restaurant online, and I can definitely see why!
The fit out of this restaurant is beautiful and modern, using greens, golds and wooden furniture. We were told we had a big dinner that night and not to order that much, but everyone in the group found so much on the menu that they wanted to eat that it was impossible to not order a couple of things! We ended up being completely stuff because the food was so delicious. The food is based on traditional Minoan and Cretan cuisine, and so they had all these really interesting dishes that you wouldn’t find anywhere else, and since coming back I still haven’t been able to find recipes for them!
Firstly, they brought out this amazing bread basket with a lid that had all these different types of bread, and a beautiful beetroot dip to go with it. What I found in Greece generally was their hospitality was great in that wherever you went to eat you were always getting free bread, dips, appetizers and/or desserts. It was so good because you got to try a few things you wouldn’t normally, but it was also difficult because it meant I kept filling up on bread and starters! The bread at this restaurant was so good, I kept going back for more!
Everyone was so impressed with what they ordered and it was all absolutely delicious, but I have to say out of all the tasters I had of everyone else’s, my lunch was my favourite. It was the Kreokakavos which was slow cooked pork with honey and thyme. It came out and was perfectly caramelised but covered in a delicate honey sauce, and it fell to pieces it was cooked so well. I can’t even describe how good the taste was because it was just unlike anything I’ve ever tasted, and won’t be able to find anywhere else! I’m going to have to try to recreate it soon because writing about it is making me hungry!
Whether you are after a well cooked steak (the smoked beef actually came out smoking on a hook) or delicate zucchini flowers, you’ll find something you love here. All finished off with a bit of liqueur and this amazing semolina and honey dessert. It was the perfect meal, and I only wish we had been able to go back so I could have tried some of the other stuff on the menu!
Meze for days
One of the things I loved most in Greece was the meze. I often looked at a menu and just wanted to try bits and pieces from the starters menu because everything sounded absolutely incredible. We usually ended up eating way more than we should of because I wanted to order at least 3 starters and mains. Luckily we were eating in a big group for a few meals and so got to try a lot of variety in the different Greek starters, so I felt like I picked up some favourites along the way.
Greece is known for meze and so when you find yourself there, make sure you make room for the starters! They come out on little plates in small servings so you can try a bit of everything, and this is lucky because there is always so much to try! One of my favourite starters was the saganaki, but this was closely followed by zucchini balls. This was something we learnt to make at our cooking class, and it was something that we ended up getting at a lot of restaurants. The balls have a lot of herbs and cheese in them and are lightly fried before being served. We had every shape and size from zucchini sticks to small balls to patties, but all of them were delicious! One taverna recommended pairing them with the local Cretan cheese which is a soft goats cheese. They asked us if we wanted to try it, and brought us out this giant plate of it! My partner doesn’t usually like goat’s cheese, but the goat’s cheese on Crete doesn’t have the same acidity that it does here, and it is a lot softer in flavour. It went perfectly with the zucchini balls, as well as my main of stuffed roasted veggies!
Another meze staple is dips and pita bread. I absolutely loved trying all the dips, and the dips at Ferryman were by far the best I had. The eggplant dip had to be the best I’ve ever eaten as it was smoked to perfection and had a really interesting flavour. I made the mistake of filling up on dips here because they were so good! They also had an incredible peach salad which was one of the most amazing salads I’ve ever eaten (granted it had a sorbet in it so is it really a salad? I’m going to say yes). If you are in Elounda I would highly recommend this restaurant, it definitely came close second to Peskesi. We also ate a lot of dolmades which is something I’m not a fan of in Australia, but in Greece they were absolutely incredible!
These are just a couple of suggestions for you, but I know you’re going to have a hard time picking what to order regardless of what I say! If I have one bit of advice you listen to though, eat all the meze!
Freddo Cappuccino
This is a drink you can get all over Greece, but was something I fell in love with in Crete. It was the start to my day basically every morning, or whenever I could get my hands on one, as my partner and I were both absolutely obsessed! I’ve never seen these in Australia, but I am really considering trying to make one myself just for the memories!
Now Greeks are not known for their coffee, and I do have to say the coffee wasn’t that great over there (I mean we come from Australia so we are massive coffee snobs, therefore most European coffee isn’t like what you get back home – yes even in Italy), but the Freddo Cappuccino was the perfect way to get your coffee fix without piling sugar into a bitter coffee. It is a cold drink where they put black coffee in with ice, and then they froth up milk in a milkshake maker and pour it onto the top. What you end up with is sort of a cappuccino but with less mixing of the milk and coffee (you have to do this yourself) so it actually looks quite pretty as the coffee and milk are separated. It is like having an iced coffee with ice cream without the guilt because you aren’t actually having ice cream, but it still tastes creamy. It is also the perfect solution for cappuccino lovers who want a cold drink – honestly, I don’t know why this hasn’t come to Australia yet! Maybe I need to start a side business, but I would probably drink all the products.
When you order them, they will ask you if you want sugar. I had one without and it was way too bitter, and I also had one with sugar which was so sweet I could barely drink it. We realised after a time buying these drinks (we were definitely experts at the end) that the perfect amount of sugar was ‘medium’. If you say this they will only put a little bit in, which is just enough to take the bitter edge off the coffee, but not feel like you’re drinking sugar! This is my pro tip for you so you don’t have to go through the misses that we did before we found the perfect Freddo Cappuccino.
All the pastries
Finally, the last thing I loved eating in Crete was pastries. You can find pastries and breads all across Greece, so this is definitely not something specific to Crete. I loved this as an option for a quick snack or meal when you were at an airport, travelling between places, or just wanted something easy and tasty for breakfast. My partner and I found ourselves often walking to the local town to get a pastry in the morning instead of having cereal for breakfast, and it was definitely a good option! The only problem is choosing between all the different flavours as there really are so many.
One of my favourites was a round pastry that was filled with cheese, ham and this beautiful spiced relish. We had something similar in Puglia last year, but the Greek version had less pastry and more filling so it was definitely my favourite. I also loved the classic spinach and feta because you really can’t go wrong with this one, and you really can get it anywhere. In Crete their Feta is quite mild so it has a subtle flavour which I quite liked. You could also get a sweet pastry filled with the local cheese which is almost like a ricotta but mixed with cinnamon, and this made for a great sweet option when you craved that over savoury! If you don’t feel like that much filling, you can also opt for the round twist that they bake and put filling into the middle of such as olives and sundried tomatoes. It is sort of like a bread but the flavours from the filling burst in your mouth while you eat it.
Whatever type of pastry you like, I would highly recommend trying a couple while you are in Greece. We got most of ours at Elounda’s Bakery (which for the record also has great fresh orange juice and sandwhiches), but I’m not lying when I say you can literally find them everywhere. It took every ounce of my self control to not buy 5 or so to take on the plane on the way home, because they were all so good!
So there you have it, the top foods I ate in Crete. There were so many more that didn’t make the list because I pretty much loved every meal, but when I think back on my time there those are the ones that really stood out. It’s definitely making me miss my holiday now thinking about all this delicious food we were eating. I really didn’t get sick of the food in Crete, and so I can’t wait to go back and try some more! Hopefully this post has given you some ideas not only of the food, but also the restaurants we tried and loved. It’s hard to find restaurants when you’re overseas, and so I was glad we were told about these so I could pass on the knowledge of my amazing foodie experiences!
Until next time, happy eating!
Ella xx
