Having grown up in the country in the 1950s the culture of starters was alien to me. It wasn’t until much later, in the period when German cooking went European, that hors d’œuvres, antipasti, tapas & co. appeared on our tables – on mine too, after I’d acquired the taste on my first holiday in Greece. We’ve been going back ever since, and each time, just before we arrive at our favourite holiday destination, we perform a little ritual intended to heighten the thrill of anticipation…

 

We get out of the car. With the force of a sauna the Ionian afternoon smothers our cooled skin – cooled from half an hour air-conditioning inside the car, from 25 hours of artificial air on the ferry, from autumn, winter and spring in north Germany. We walk towards a gap in the oleander. This shrub frequently lines the roads in the mountainous coastal region, as if forming a guard of honour adorned with pompous white, pink and purple frills. We step up to the cliff’s edge. Below us, deep down, spilling out under the blast furnace of the sun, is a plain shimmering in hues of moss and olive green, grass and yellow green, pea and ivy green. A golden beach wheels around the sapphire blue ocean bay and is itself skirted by a grove of eucalyptus trees capped with rust-brown crowns. Huddled against it is a clustered village, an open labyrinth assembled from alabaster-coloured dwellings and buildings with carmine red roofs. The river’s course can only be surmised from a scar in the green skin.

As we listen intently to the buzzing insects an incoming breeze wafts the scents of wild thyme and sage towards us – and our mouths begin to water. We are looking forward in particular to two tavernas. The first is by the river. A boat is mooring on the bank and Vassilis is fumbling with the catch in his nets. Soula, a toothless mother of five feet, is standing with her arms akimbo. And after warm greetings all round the patriarch Spyros welcomes us with an ouzo – uncooled, comme il faut – along with his favourite méses (Greek for starter or snack).
That’s what we’d feared.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s an old custom to serve mésedes with ouzo – a little squid, tsatsiki, feta cheese and such like. And dear old Soula is famous all around for her way of preparing freshly caught fish. But ever since Spyros started cultivating a small garden he, the pater familias, has come to see himself as Bocuse. He pushes a saucer towards us and wishes us “Kalí órexi”, or bon appétit. And an appetite we certainly do have.

Albeit not so much for his latest creation. It looks like seaweed but had in fact once been chard, now drowned in an ocean of lemon juice, vinegar and oil. Well, it just about slips down if propelled by a shot of ouzo…

But on the second evening it’s our custom to visit Alex. That’s where we can indulge uninhibitedly in our passion for feasting on hors d’œuvres. Alex’s taverna lies in the heart of the village. Even at a distance we can smell the aroma coming from the grill and fresh herbs. Roofed by the foliage of ancient plane trees, the tables stand ready for us on the terrace of natural stone slabs, cast in a greenish pall from a chain of coloured light bulbs. After an endless exchange of greetings Alex serves up: a bowl full of salad made from his own, home-grown tomatoes and cucumbers ripened under the Ionian sun, strips of green pepper, red onions in rings as large as gypsy bracelets, black and green olives, gleaming dully like semi-precious stones, and large chunks of cheese resembling crumbly marble (called feta, a sheep’s milk cheese kept in brine), a bowl brimming with crispy edged home-made chips, small dishes of tsatsiki and cream cheese, for each of us a saucer of pink tarama (fish roe spread) and baked slices of aubergine and courgette, along with giant chilli peppers pickled in oil and vinegar, a basket of white bread, wonderfully coarse on the outside, fluffy on the inside, and, preceding the whole thing, yet another half a kilo of white grapes.

As we chatter we taste this and sample that, dunk here, nibble there, dipping into something else – and then Alex serves up his speciality: piperiés me tyri! Roasted red peppers coated with finest olive oil, stuffed with sheep’s cheese and garnished with parsley and mint, spiked with garlic – bad luck for the small vampire bats flying daredevil loops in the gleam of the street lamp. And to crown it all, out of the loudspeakers comes the voice of Greece’s foremost bard, Jorgos Dalaras, crooning “I soííí… aaah, i soííí-ííí…” – life, life… aah, life!

Our pidgin exchanges, the banter and the raising of glasses seem to go one forever, and seldom have we felt so agreeably filled and fragrantly contented as by our “main course of mixed starters”. Once again we grasp what the medieval poet Archipoeta meant when he declared, “Meum est propositum in taberna mori” – my aim is to die in an inn.