Greek Salad: A Dionysian Travelogue

Okay, that's a Latin phrase, and this book is a paeon to Greece and particularly to the various wines and food one can find while traversing the hills or climbing down the cellars of an inviting taverna. Greek Salad consists of a series of travelogues about the Greek mainland and many of the islands, written over a period of years. We see Naxos and Milos, Crete and Santorini as they were before and during the time when the influx of tourists changed everything. The author is a wine expert so much of the book follows his search for authentic wines that go beyond retsina. But he also is a lover of both the ancient Greece of Homer and the recent one of Zorba the Greek. There are plenty of historical and literary allusions in the book. as well as plenty of anecdotes about taxi drivers, casual friendships, tavern owners who invite him in for a sip and all those foreign tourists one runs into on the ferry over to various islands. The author offers descriptions of the brush paths and hills, beaches and small towns clinging to the ports where the ships come in from the sparkling sea so that the reader is ready to book the next flight for the Aegean. One of the historical tidbits I learned is that is that the Venetian influence over Greece extended to religion. On one island, half the population is Roman Catholic while the other half is Greek Orthodox. As for food--moussaka is basically meatloaf (made of lamb, of course), with custard embellishments. There is also something called "false meatballs" --he gives the Greek name for it--that sounds like an early version of Hamburger Helper. Cruise ships have become an important presence in the islands and a source of income for the shops and merchants that circle the harbor. However, the passengers seem to be an annoyance to the long-term visitors who abandon certain restaurants and beaches on cruise days. And the growing popularity of certain Greek islands as a "girls gone wild" hangout may make the authentic pleasures that Miles Lambert-Gocs talks about a thing of the past. I've just seen the movie "Mama Mia!" and the gorgeous scenery of the sleepy island set within a sparkling sea should have many a movie-goer packing his bags. This book will make a pleasant read before you depart.

Miles Lambert-Gócs. If ever you longed to discover Greece with a guide who knew not only the history of Greece with all the Islands included but also manifested the same gusto for life that is part of the Greek heritage, then this very fine author is the one to take you there. GREEK SALAD: A DIONYSIAN TRAVELOGUE is so full of fascinating insights into Greek history, Greek personality, and of course Greek food that is truly Hemingway's 'moveable feast.' It is one thing to write a travelogue that points the particularly splendid aspects of a country in your direction, but it is an entirely different one that is so full of spirit and tales that it also serves as a novel. Reading this book, yes, encourages calling a travel agent post haste, but it also is such a well written piece of literature that it can be appreciated simply for the repast it provides. Lambert-Gocs is a wise, informed, ebullient connoisseur of wines and foods: he is also a sprite that opens the joys of Greece like few others. Highly recommended reading! Grady Harp, March 06

A satisfying chunk of black volcanic rock never leaves my desk. I picked it up personally on the Greek island of Santorini, where steam still percolates from the ground some twenty-five hundred years after the island exploded, upending the Aegean world. You can believe my powerful paperweight is the match of even the most truculent culinary book. It has certainly helped me plumb the depths of Greek Salad, a "Dionysian Travelogue" by American wine writer Miles Lambert-Gócs. Lambert roams Greece-the Aegean islands, the mainland, the Ionian islands-in an attempt to transmit, even amplify, a taste of Greece into accessible English prose. The result-even if you can taste Greece only vicariously-is the stuff of persistent reverie. Taken individually, Lambert's 26 vignettes could only succeed in generating dramatic tension, unless, like me, you retain taste memory of a challenging retsina from Rhodes, or the best yogurt you have ever ingested. The whole of Greek Salad, though by rights it should be at least a coffee-table book (it is a tight small-format paperback), succeeds as it satisfies. I read just yesterday that recent surveys found Greeks, both male and female, to be on average even heavier than Americans. Evidently, Greeks do a lot of eating and drinking. The way Lambert tells it, the food, the wine, the soul of Greece do not spring fully-formed from a laminated restaurant menu; they are animated by earth, sea and sky. If you find yourself in Greece, you might as well eat, and wash it down with wine that originates just a stone's throw from your table. You can work it all off in the gym on your return. Lambert has the imagination and scope to extol both the obscure and the predictable. Nearly every American "Greek diner" I have ever turned to as refuge from the night has offered a credible mousaka, a hybrid dish Lambert examines lightheartedly in his chapter on Larissa, on the Greek mainland in Thessaly. "Mousaka," Lambert writes, "certainly cannot lay with the en croute delicacies; but on the other hand it does not sink with the fluid casseroles either. Sometimes it seems to slide in between the terrines and pâtés...However, the rarer low-built mousaka, with its slim strata, cuts nicely on the bias and, if highly flavored with sweet spices, can for all the world seem a soft, non-stick baklava." If detail is delicious, Lambert serves up a feast, even if we want to pardon the author's French. Or ferry-hop to the Aegean island of Syros, which Lambert visits for a second, longer look after having guiltily given the island short shrift in a previous incarnation. Here Lambert is hosted by shipping magnate John Vatis, who, after having acquired a taste for chardonnay in California, has fostered a wine-culture on the island. Vatis cultivates his vines "under Israeli conditions-no water and very bad land," using elaborate drip irrigation systems combined with the best technology money can buy. At the outset, a California enologist had informed Vatis

In "Greek Salad," Miles Lambert provides some of the expert commentary enjoyed previously in his first book, "The Wines of Greece," but in this volume lets us join him, personally, in his quest for great Greek wines in the classical and modern traditions. His witty insights and delightful references to ancient and more recent writers, from the likes of Aristophanes and Homer, through travelers on "the Grand Tour," such as Lord Byron and others, will no doubt bring a sense of keen recognition and delight to most of his readers. Authored by a master of English with a considerable command of Greek language and culture, "Greek Salad" makes me want to jump on a plane, and then catch a boat, to seek out "tavernas" of my own and experience some of the Greek places, wines, and foods our "Odysseus of the Wine Jars" so deliciously and entertainingly describes.

From the Aegean Islands to the Ionian Islands, with mainland Greece in between, Miles Lambert shares his travels and reveals a land where the regional food, wines, and its tavernas are all rooted and bound in the rich histories and lore of Greece. The simple yet evocative prose made me envision the dog-eared journal pages stained by a hearty red, or the sun-baked vistas and salty villages the author describes. While France and Italy have all been the backdrop for other travel diaries, it is time that Greece recieves its due recognition. This book is a wonderful exploration of a place that has so much to offer at every turn of a page.