Our national cuisine is an important force for the development of our national economy and is part of the general marketing of the Greek Tourism portfolio. There are many and important reasons why all of us must work even harder to contribute to its evolution and development: The highlighting of our culinary culture and its long history of 2.500 years, the need to create a clear national culinary identity for the which we will be proud of, the contribution of our national cuisine to the promotion of local food products of which only a small part is still widely known today, its contribution to local economies but also the country's biggest bet in relation to culinary tourism the which is gaining more and more ground by making richer the countries that aim for its development.

The "athinorama" with his international travel and culinary experience saw the need to upgrade our national cuisine from the distant 1994. He has worked since then with specific goals in this direction, laying the foundations for the upgrade and evolution of Greek cuisine. With the support and promotion of the new generation of chefs who started studying and experimenting with Greek cuisine, the continuous tastings, the strict evaluations and reviews of the restaurants, and with the Institution of the "Golden Caps" gastronomy awards, the "athenorama" » has been the main driving force behind its evolution, for Greek cuisine to shine, to become fashionable and to be loved by the public again.

Today our national gastronomy evolves from year to year in an impressive way, it functions as a trend of artistic expression and by whatever criteria you look at it, culturally, socially or economically, it is in a field of constant movement and change, fermentation and energy.

But the renaissance of our national cuisine could never have been achieved without the love, interest, passion and ambition of the Greek chefs who rediscovered their country's cuisine and set out to upgrade and develop it. It owes a lot in the first place to the new generation of chefs of the 90s. Strong personalities and unique culinary artists, Lazarou, Karamolegos, Peskias and Baxevanis make a revolution around '95! They disrupt tradition, review, study, experiment, incorporate new techniques, discover forgotten products from old local cuisines and highlight them in their dishes, leading Greek cuisine into the 21st century. From the 00s to today, the younger generations of highly successful Greek chefs will take Greek gastronomy to even higher levels by combining modern cooking technology with the emotion and essence of Greekness.

Aiming at the further development and evolution of our national cuisine, we decided on yet another positive action: The highlighting and awarding of the best Greek cuisine restaurants of the entire country through their own award ceremony and their independence from the Golden Caps Institution. At the same time, giving importance to the decentralization which is necessary for the flourishing of our national cuisine, we decided to hold the award ceremony every year in Thessaloniki. With our choice we want to simultaneously honor this special gastronomic city in which, due to its history, different people with different taste cultures have strongly left their imprints through exchanges of their taste cultures. Macedonian traditions, Byzantine idioms, European taste approaches, oriental techniques and refugee habits have for centuries created a highly interesting and unique local cuisine, a point of reference for all of Greece.

The independence of the Greek Cuisine Awards from the institution of the Golden Caps, we are sure that it will give new impetus to our national gastronomy, to our culinary self-knowledge and to the dynamic development of our national cuisine, to claim an even better position in the international quality culinary box office .