Greek food

Before going to Greece, my favorite Greek food was hummus and baba ghanoush. The first thing we did when we got to Greece was try to find some hummus. It took us 5 days of searching and we finally just asked a restaurant why no one served hummus and it turns out neither hummus nor baba ghanoush are greek dishes. The waiter was actually offended when we asked him... he said lots of American's come asking for hummus, but it is a middle eastern dish. 

Those were the only two food items I knew I liked, so without those the trip turned out to be a culinary adventure. 

One of the great surprises of the trip was finding out I liked the dolmadakia's (seen below on the left plate). These are stuffed grape leaves and I have tried them before in the states and hated them. But in greece, they were wonderful!  Also pictured below are the greek meatballs in tomato sauce (very back plate). These are known as Soutzoukakia and they were Luke's favorite dish. The meatball mixture is also what they use to make their hamburgers which Jack enjoyed very much. 

From left: dolmadakia's, greek salad, can't remember what the
dish on the right was, in the back are the greek meatballs

Although we didn't find baba ghanoush, we did find eggplant salad "Melizanosalata" which is pretty similar. That along with tzatziki and some fresh bread was a daily appetizer for us

Eggplant salad and tzatziki

Fried vegetables of all kinds were also very popular

In the island of Santorini we tried the local specialty of fried tomato patties (top left).

Top left: fried tomato patties, bottom left: tzatziki,
bottom right: skewered meatballs, top right: feta eggrolls

More tasty Greek food that I can't remember what it was

Octopus vinaigrette was also very popular. Luke was the only one brave enough to try it, but he could only eat one bite

Top left: the octopus piece Luke is trying to feed Jack

Even though it's not a greek dish, I found one restaurant that served hummus so I got some

Hummus

By far our favorite discovery were the greek donuts "loukoumades." These tasty treats are small fried donuts covered in honey cinnamon sauce.

Loukoumades

I wouldn't say I loved greek food. It was okay, but I'd be fine if I didn't eat it again. The funny thing is my favorite meal on our Greece trip was the food I ate during our 1 day in Turkey. Makes me want to plan a vacation to Turkey just to get some more Lahmacun.