Today, Greek cuisine is at a fairly satisfactory level, it rises in quality from year to year and shows that in the future it can have an impressive development. But things were not always like this. "athenorama" has followed its development very closely and knows as well as anyone the stages it went through, the disrepute it suffered from in the 1970s and 80s, the public's relationship with it, the persons who played a role in its development. "Athenorama" was the first Greek media to establish a restaurant review column back in 1976. If one searches the magazine's archive, one will find the desperation of the taste critics when evaluating Greek cuisine restaurants in those early years. Our national cuisine was abandoned and businessmen and cooks did not think, with very few exceptions that their number did not exceed the fingers of one hand, to deal with it because they considered it passé. By "Greek cuisine" at that time, the cooks meant grilled ribs and octopus, tzatziki, touristy moussaka, stuffed and country salad with cheap oil. Few shops held the flag of Greek cuisine high, such as the historic "Apotsos" and "Gerofinoikas" (which no longer exist) as well as "Fatsio", but unfortunately the authentic traditional Greek cuisine did not exist except in poorly maintained kitchens, where people only ate lunch.

Very good attempts to present classic Greek cuisine appeared towards the end of the 1980s, "Vlassis" in Armatolon and Klefton then and, shortly after, the unforgettable "Apaggio", which brought to Athens the exciting idea of ​​local specialties from all over Greece. But they are alone in a city that still lives in the spring of the mezedo shops. Then it comes to the fore Nikos Sarandos, who founded the Chef's Club in 1992, helping with his movement to raise the prestige of chefs, while at the same time leading the renewal of Greek cuisine at that time.
At the same time, in the mid-90s, "athenorama" decides to intervene dynamically in the situation, to put forward his pen and his tasting team and to support the efforts of the few chefs of the time who had begun to timidly change the landscape of Greek cuisine. The effort to reward her started from the first year of the Golden Caps institution, but unfortunately our national cuisine, dehydrated, shrunken and touristic, was not yet at such a high level that her restaurants were included in the award list.

Today, with gastronomy being a strong card in the marketing of tourism, the creation of a national cuisine with a clear identity - a cuisine that expresses our common experience through flavors with which we have grown up - is a great demand.

The first golden triplet of Greek cuisine appears in 1996-97, consisting of "Vitrina", "Varoulko" and "Rena of Ftilia". Chrysanthos Karamolegos mixes Greece with the exoticism of the Mediterranean in its sunny flavors, Lefteris Lazarou establishing humble ingredients – she says with a pike-perch – and giving pesto a Greek color by infusing it with ouzo, Rena cooks an intensely personal Greek cuisine interpreting extremely classic Greek delicacies. For the first time, imaginative culinary minds take the Greek taste essence, filter it and serve it in an innovative and creative way.
Over the next six years, the situation improved and "a" now systematically awards restaurants in Athens that express the modern face of Greek cuisine and orchestrate an inventive repertoire of innovative ideas with a deeply Greek flavor. "Kiupia", "Kallisti", "Designated Flavors" are the most important of them, while in 1998 in "Glues" a special award "For the use of rare raw materials" is awarded for the first time. Throughout the 1990s, Greek cuisine does not yet have the prestige of fine dining in the public mind, which is monopolized by luxury restaurants of mainly French and international cuisine, along with some good Far Eastern ones. It seems unthinkable, with very few exceptions, for the morals of the time to go out and eat Greek. We live in the constellation of the neo-enrichment of cream – only the dishes containing it are considered strastas, so the Greek cuisine suffers from glitter in the eyes of many.

The strongly symbolic nature of the year 2000 and the euphoria prevailing in our country after it undertaking the organization of the 2004 Olympic Games become a driving force for the development of Greek cuisine. Restaurants are springing up one after the other, turning it into a strong trend now. So much so that we are now talking about culinary Greek fashion, which is expressed with pure Greek restaurants but also with extremely Greek dishes in restaurants with modern cuisine. This development is no longer limited to Athens, but is growing throughout the territory. There are now enough Greek restaurants in the region to put a stop to the tourist abuse of our national cuisine. So the next major milestone is the expansion of the evaluation and distinctions at a pan-Hellenic level in 2003, within the framework of the Golden Hats. The cauldron, which has been boiling for a long time, swells and the Greek cuisine from a poor relative becomes a privileged field of culinary marketing.

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  The sour and fragrant Prespa giants with dill and lime, combined with egg roe, are among the grand soux of Konstantina Faklaris at "Zillers"

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  Alexandros Koskina's seafood juvetsada at "Tudor Hall" touches us with its high culinary, emotional aura

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  The modern, elegant and refined Corfu bianco is the best dish of Spyros Agios at "Santoro" of the hotel "Grace Santorini"

The result is a burst of creativity which is presented systematically from the pages of "athinorama". Sophisticated minimalist austerity, culinary postmodernism, modern transcription of local culinary idioms, deepening and refined presentation of the essence of the Greek taste alphabet. Greek cuisine demonstrates a high artistic potential by following various paths. "Dionysos", "Winch", "Hytra", "Mavrikos", "Athiri", "Alatsi", "Oil Resto", "Aneton", "Yellow Bike" "Marina", "Telemachos Barbeque Club", "Vassilainas" , "Clochard", "Kontosoros", "Leventis" are the restaurants that stand out and will be awarded between 2001 and 2007. Along with them, however, two new Athenian restaurants seal the developments.

A "blue and white" culinary spring spreads from the most gourmet restaurants with Greek cuisine to the refined traditional taverns. From one end to the other in Greece, patriotic culinary enthusiasm prevails!

At "48 The Restaurant", Christoforos Peskias leads a modern gourmet restaurant that advances Greek cuisine along well-researched conceptual paths, with the now famous tomato sushi as a trademark. Kostas Spiliadis creates a completely new approach to Greek cuisine at "Milos Estiatorio", showing how the taste superiority of top raw materials, worked with simple cooking methods of great precision, can end up with an excellent expressive result. A special mention deserves the development of Cretan cuisine as a separate, strong trend with restaurants like "Krissa Gi" and others, which escaped heavy folklore by modernizing their style and setting an example of how local culture can touch a wider world.
Meanwhile, the Greek kitchen is on fire and the Golden Caps of the "athinorama", awarding the cream of the crop, pour the oil that will ignite it at the right moment, while displaying quick reflexes and insight.

In 2009 "a" takes the initiative of establishing separate Greek Cuisine Awards next to the Golden Caps. This move gives new impetus to our national gastronomy. A "blue and white" culinary spring spreads from the most gourmet restaurants with Greek cuisine to the refined traditional taverns. From one end to the other in Greece, patriotic culinary enthusiasm prevails!

And while all this is happening in our territorial waters, there is also an effervescence in the international culinary scene. An amazing variety of new techniques are spreading like lightning in the kitchens of the world, chefs are excited to see their hands untied, new powerful trends are coming to the fore and influencing cooks in every corner of the planet. As knowledge is no longer sealed, and everyone has access to it through the internet and the excellent books constantly published by the world's best chefs, a new phenomenon of globalized gastronomy is emerging across the planet. The logic of fusion with ingredients that come from every corner and become fashionable is gaining great popularity, while at the same time the fascination exerted on the chefs by the advanced cooking techniques often goes so far as to cover the national identity of the dishes, resulting in a nice, modern kitchen, which you can't recognize but which is its flag. It is not strange that this new cosmopolitanism affected the Greek culinary scene, confusing the public and professionals as to what is Greek and what is not. As he says the "athinorama" manifesto for modern Greek cuisine: "A modern culinary creation does not have the right to be "considered" Greek, either because it is based on Greek products or because its presentation on the menu resembles the image of a Greek cuisine dish.

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  The gourmet version of the stew by Giorgos Stylianoudakis at "Kensho Restaurant" in Mykonos

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  The grouper with earthy bean cream velvet, spicy sausage and celery sauce is one of the best recent creations of Lefteris Lazaros and Yiannis Parikos

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  Cuttlefish rice with fried cuttlefish and goat's milk cream, the excellent modern approach to Rhodesian cuisine by Stamatis Misomikes and Giorgos Troumouhis at the "Noble" of the "Elysium" hotel

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  Lobster stew in a very original variation of the classic recipe by George Stylianoudakis (below) at "Avli" in Rethymnon

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  Nikolas Stavrakakis' "ramen round" at "Elia's Restaurant" in Skiathos, with slow-cooked pancetta and buckwheat noodles.

Greekness can only be established through its taste and aromas, that is, only through the admission that it communicates with the common feeling about Greek cuisine".
It is now clear that we are at a critical crossroads. On the one hand we have many chefs who create and cook in very good Greek cuisine restaurants and a new generation of chefs who are burning with their love for Greek cuisine, but on the other hand there is clear confusion as to exactly what Greek cuisine is. One of its protagonists, from the first group of those who started the Greek culinary revolution, O Giannis Baxevanis, emphasizes underlining his concerns: "By mixing foreign products, foreign recipes and foreign words in Greek cuisine, we try to impress the Greeks as well as the foreign visitors who know our Greek products, Greek tastes, traditions and habits, resulting in often an allalum of flavors that we call "modern Greek cuisine". A person must have a personality and a people a tradition, this makes them special. Imagine a uniform world where all people dress the same, speak the same language, and eat the same!"

Our national cuisine is a key factor of our cultural identity and a strong card in the marketing of tourism, precisely for this reason it must be distinguished next to other national cuisines. Now that democratization is one of the main changes that have occurred in the global culinary scene and no one can claim anymore to have the primacy of haute cuisine by hereditary right on the globe, more than ever we have to show that we are beautiful and special. Directly linked to this reality is our own need for national culinary self-awareness. At the point where we are today, it is a great demand and duty creating a national cuisine with a clear identity – of a cuisine that expresses our common experience through flavors that we have grown up with, like a taste thread that connects us almost automatically, especially in its most classic form, just as its spiritual, cultural and emotional dimension has fermented in the DNA of Greeks.

At the right moment, the "athinorama" takes another big initiative, launching a new institution, the now autonomous Greek Cuisine Awards, based in Thessaloniki, where their own award ceremony will take place.

The protagonists of Greek cuisine who have played a primary role in its evolution have their own way of describing it very vividly. THE Christoforos Peskias, believing that the Greek food we eat in restaurants now is much better than it was fifteen years ago - "it doesn't compare", he says characteristically -, he sees that "many times the techniques prevail even over many dishes that we christen Greek without out of memory. We have to be a living part of the modern culinary development, but we have to pass the modern trends and techniques through our own Greek filter. The experience of being Greek is of great importance to me: how I feel e.g. when I sit in the shade of an olive tree in Kardamili and dip the bread in the juice left by the tomatoes in the village salad. This feeling is very Greek and you have to find a modern way to put it in your kitchen. Briam may not be highly technical, but it has character. We should not ignore the old techniques, because they give the kitchen an identity and activate our common memory. Precisely for this reason, the rice in the sushi we made at "48" was boiled a little longer, it was not al dente, so that it would have contact with the traditional fillings. Greece means mountain, sun, tension... Good recipes have spirit! We should not limit ourselves to classic Greek food, but develop our modern gastronomy by embracing the particularity of the flavors of our local cuisines, just as Hadjidakis embraced the music of Tsitsanis".

However, he also gives great importance to locality Chrysanthos Caramolegos. "Every chef involved in Greek cuisine must travel all over Greece, find local ingredients and try the recipes of its regions in order to get to know directly the breadth and depth of its flavors and to be inspired. Then he will decide what suits him best to modernize it. Some time ago I found small "goat geladas" in Taygetos, which are not suitable for grilling, but give a stew with an incredibly aromatic taste. The locals know it, but we have to learn it too. Walking along the beach of the “Costa Navarino”, I picked mullein and fennel, which come out this season. I left them side by side on the table and after a while they smelled a new scent, which was more than the two scents together! If you limit yourself to Athens, you are lost, you cannot live such experiences and your inspiration is not renewed. Today, not many young chefs travel and try the countryside... You can't make foam if you don't know Greek pot.''

A creation is not entitled to be "considered" Greek because it is based on Greek products or because its presentation on the menu resembles the image of a dish of Greek cuisine. Greekness can only be detected through the taste and aromas.

Summarizing the matter somewhat, I always remember what has been said to me many times by Lefteris Lazarou: "Today's cuisine is born from childhood memories, grandmother's tzoukali and its muskmelons, Sunday's stew. We step on them and, by cooking more abstractly, we adapt the kitchen to our times, while preserving its Greek color and our memories". That is why the "athinorama" manifesto, after initially clarifying that "Greek cuisine is the collective taste consciousness that we have as a people, in terms of its flavors, aromas and idioms", insists that "the artful Greek cooking must incorporate in its creations the collective taste memory of the Greeks, to create a consciousness of the Greek identity, not to cut the umbilical cord between present and past, modern trend and tradition. A modern creative dish must be "read" in Greek, create associations, taste memories, identification, familiarity, emotion". And of course "a necessary condition […] is the knowledge of traditional and urban Greek cuisine, so that we can ensure the continuity of our national gastronomy and lead it into the future without the risk of losing its identity".
At the right moment, therefore, "athinorama" takes another great initiative by launching a new institution, the now autonomous Greek Cuisine Awards, completely independent from the Golden Caps and based in Thessaloniki, where their own award ceremony will take place. The dynamic evolution of Greek cuisine is upon us!