Last night we sailed through the night from Hania (Crete), to Pireaus (Athens). We slept in a small cabin with four bunks, Maria and Eleni on the bottom bunks, Anna and OT on the top bunks. Maria and Eleni, Cretan sisters, were on their way to Athens for their nephew's wedding. Nai, nai (yes, yes), they assured me, his wife-to-be is very nice.
It is 11am. I'm not usually one for going without my breakfast – the old tummy rumbles eagerly in the morning, as a rule. However, this morning all I've had is a coffee (at Starbucks, shame on us) when we got off the boat in Pireus. And although I will soon be ready for my lunch (perhaps some seafood in the port town of Patras?), I am not yet hungry. Why not? Last night, and the night before, and the night before that we ate at Portes, a Hania restaurant run by Susanna Koutoulaki (an Irish woman abroad), and her husband, a Cretan from the village of Maleme.
On the first night we arrived late, perhaps 11pm. The restaurant was empty – a woman with short curly hair and a face open and charming as a gold coin sat outside.
Portes is the last restaurant in one of the alleys of the old town. It is down past the large Samariais Taverna, past the Banana Garden (a restaurant aiming to attract tourist families with children who need amusing), and around the corner. Outside there are square white tables, each with four slim thrush-egg blue chairs. We stopped by the tables, uncertain if the restaurant was open.
'Hello girls', said Susanna, standing up and gesturing towards the door, 'come in'.
Inside the walls are the same chalky blue. The tables are covered with white cloths. A niche holds a brass pot, an amphora, a bunch of flowers. Intricate and beautiful old doors, salvaged from other buildings around the town, lean against the long left-hand wall. The bar and the small serving hatch through to the kitchen are on the right.
That first night, we ordered hora (boiled weeds), baked sardines and meatballs with leeks. We had a half litre of the house red. I asked Susanna if I should have the sardines or the gavros (small marinated fish). The sardines, she said as she scooped olives out of a barrel for us. 'The gavros is finished,' she said and laughed.
'What's good?' asked OT.
'Have the meatballs,' said Susanna, 'with leeks'. Then she brought us our bread and olives.
Restaurants in Greece will almost always offer a small bowl of olives and a basket of bread to start the meal, adding one or two euro to the bill. In most cases the bread is soft and white, with sesame seeds on top. Sometimes it comes with butter, sometimes we dip it in the olive oil from the cruet provided on every table. At Portes the bread is brown and tasty, homemade and filling.
I read about hora recently, when I was cooking greek beans at home, and the cookbook noted that the dish would usually be served with boiled weeds. I improvised with puha, dandelion, kale, chickweed and silverbeet. True hora is closest to a small dandelion. The plant is boiled whole and served in oil and lemon. When served, the fleshy white bases and the rosettes of limp green leaves look like small sea creatures, rather than vegetables. They taste of oxalic, and a slight dark green astringency.
On that first evening we were just passing through, unlikely ever to be seen again. Still, as we stood at the bar paying the bill, Susanna reached under the counter and brought out a little hour-glass shaped flagon, two shot glasses and a big green bottle. She filled the little flagon and then poured us out two shots. The raki was smooth and sweet, a definite alcohol hit to the mouth and brain, but nothing like the stomach-twisting offerings we'd had so far.
'This is good!' we said.
'My husband makes it,' she said.
Full and loosened by food, wine and raki, we made our way home.
The next day we decided to go back. This time Susanna's Cretan husband served us. He raised his eyebrow as we decided on a litre of the house red, and ordered four dishes (hora, roast vegetable salad, baked giant beans and mousaka).
'I bring the salads first,' he said, 'and then...' He circled his hand to indicate bringing us the rest of our feast.
He brought us the hora and little crucible of rock salt. 'Here', he said, 'a little more oil, and use this salt'. We looked up at him tenderly.
The food was, as mentioned in previous posts, exceptional. The roast vegetable salad with local cheese: the cheese soft, almost sticky, a gentle relative of feta; the vegetables varied, and each cooked to be al dente; the 'unique dressing', as promised in the menu, uniquely delicious. The mousaka spiced, the eggplant melting around the grains of mince, and the giant beans, big as the flat of a big man's thumb, in a tomato sauce orange with caramelised sweetness and olive oil.
That evening we sat outside. Our host, impressed at our capacity, brought us the little flagon of raki and a bunch of green table grapes. We motioned him to join us. He stood by the table, smoking and raising his glass with us, and talking about making the raki with grapes from his home village of Maleme. The red wine, as well, he makes. He told us that Susanna is from Ireland, and that the restaurant has been open five years.
It was late, again. He went inside then came out again with another little bottle, slipping it onto our table. He went inside to clean. We drank the raki. He came back out and saw the empty bottle. He clicked his tongue in amusement, fetched another bottle, and sat with us to drink it. We toasted each other, and Crete, and New Zealand, and said we'd be back for an early dinner before the ferry tomorrow.
We left, very relaxed, and climbed the three flights of stairs to our beds.
On the third night, our host touched our arms as we arrived to show his pleasure at seeing us, and called Susanna to say hello. We asked him to choose our dinner. He looked carefully over the menu, running his finger down the list, pausing on a dish, considering, saying 'too much cheese', or 'not two pies', putting together a meal.
He choose smoked pork and cheese pie, eggplant rolls, rabbit with prunes, and, though we ordered the roast vegetables again, brought us instead a different vegetable dish, saying 'try this, if you don't like it, I will eat it'.
We liked it - we liked it very much, a stack of zucchini and eggplant, layered with pesto and mint. The rabbit was light and parted gently under the teeth, the dark meat by the bone soft as jelly. The crisp short pastry of the pie enclosed a slab of white cheese and slices of aromatic, pink and fawn pork.
We asked for the bill - he bought the check, the familiar clear hour-glass shaped bottle, and a plate of chocolate cake and ice-cream. Kaimaki ice cream, with the herbed taste of Cretan hills in the sheep's milk, and chocolate cake baked in its own sauce, luscious and dripping.
We ate, and had to leave for the boat, our bellies full and our minds at ease and comforted by being fed, freely and with care.
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