The UK’s experienced a restaurant revolution. So why haven’t the Greek Islands?

HAVING recently returned from a holiday in the Greek Islands, I realise that it’s unlikely that you’ll encounter someone telling you that they go to Greece for a gourmet experience.

Having been to the Islands a half-dozen or so times over the decades and, as the years have passed and my tastes have developed, it seems that that Greek cuisine has hardly developed at all. The only real change, apart from the prices, is the influx of other ethnic restaurants such as found in the UK: Indian, Chinese, Thai and so on.

Back in the 1970s, when the offering in the UK was fairly challenging, it was quite interesting to eat what seemed like refreshingly honest local food – meat grilled on skewers, olive-filled Greek salads, bits of vines other than just the grapes – and to soak up the grape-derived alcohol with an exotic non-pasta, lasagna -like meal called Moussaka. Funny how things are still the same. And I think I know why.

In the UK, customers drive restaurants and other food offerings. Of course, there are the chain fast food outlets where advertising campaigns dictate the menu. But where people are choosing to spend more on something non-essential, they are likely to be more considered in their choice of eatery and will vote with their feet. As a result, the UK restaurant offering has undergone a revolution over the past 20 or 30 years.

So why hasn’t this happened in Greece? Well it’s worth examining our fast food outlets again. Their offering is dictated by pure economics. There’s loads of competition to keep prices low, but with shareholder coercion to increase profits. As a result, the pressure to use cheaper and cheaper ingredients intensifies. Who on Earth would have once believed that millions of people would be pulling up at a drive-through to buy food that once would have been, at worst, only fit for the restaurant waste bin or, at best, for the stock pot? But that’s what now happens with potato skins and chicken wings. To get to that position, these large organisations have spent millions on telling us that we love the bits they used to throw away and to convince us that we’ve always eaten these bits – and no other bits.

This pressure to use such ingredients dictates the menu and, apart from some imaginative use of previously discarded items, stifles menu development. Well perversely, something similar happened in Greece; but not just in the fast food sector rather than throughout the restaurant market. At least in the majority of island restaurants.

Until recently, and I’m not being ironic here, Greece hadn’t had the benefit of the stability we experienced in the UK since the Second World War. In fact, for eight years, between 1967 and 1974, the country was actually ruled by a military junta who, apart from their brutal handling of anyone brave enough to voice opposition – managed to impose all sorts of bizarre legislation; some that resulted in restaurants carrying an identical menu. It didn’t mean that restaurants needed to serve identical food – they could choose which dishes to serve and indicate which they did by putting a price next to that dish and, of course, they could choose to cook those dishes in their own inimitable style – but it did encourage them to keep to a limited repertoire. As a result, every restaurant ended up being part of something that’s similar to what you’ll find in any North American shopping mall food court. I couldn’t believe it when I first went to the US and heard: “Hey, I know my chicken wings, but I know this place that serves the best in the city!” Where’s the diversity? Where’s the imagination?

Now, if you think back to that ridiculous junta time, it was obvious that it was never going to last. But it’s left its legacy – not least a standard menu in just about any restaurant into which a tourist ventures. It seems quaint in some ways that you can still get traditional Greek cooking in their restaurants. But I have to admit that, after a few days of eating at Greek tavernas, I was longing for my own home-cooked food. Oldfields, as a restaurant, specialises in traditional British dishes. But if most other restaurants in Durham offered the same, we’d soon be looking at a different offering. Obviously the Indian and Chinese restaurant operators saw the same opportunity.