Taverna

A taverna on the Greek island of Naxos.

A taverna (Greek: ταβέρνα) is a small Greek restaurant that serves Greek food. It is an important part of Greek culture. The taverna has become familiar to foreign visitors to Greece and through the building of tavernes (Greek: ταβέρνες, plural) in countries such as the United States and Australia by Greeks.

Name

The word taverna (Greek: ταβέρνα) is borrowed from the Latin word taberna meaning “shop” or "inn".

History

The earliest Greek restaurant was discovered in ancient Athens by archaeologists in the early 1970s. Large amounts of cooking and eating utensils were found at the taverna like plates, mixing bowls, lidded casseroles, spits for broiling meat, mortars for chopping and grinding along with a cooking bell and many different jugs. Large amounts of seafood were also found like oysters, mussels, murex, and large fish. A nearby wine shop, maybe connected to the restaurant, served local Attic wine and many other wines imported from Chios, Mende, Corinth, Samos and Lesbos.

There were also shops serving wine in the Byzantine Empire. This is known from a 10th-century Byzantine curfew meant to prevent drunken "violence and rioting".

Menu

A typical menu for a modern taverna often includes:

• Bread, usually loaf bread, sometimes flat bread
• Meat like lamb, pork and beef
• Salads such as Greek salad
• Appetizers like tzatziki (yogurt, garlic and cucumber dip), melitzanosalata (eggplant dip), tirokafteri (whipped feta cheese with hot peppers and olive-oil dip), spanakopita and dolmades/dolmadakia (rice mixture with fresh herbs like mint and parsley and sometimes pine nuts with minced meat added in some regions, tightly wrapped with tender grape-leaves and served with a thick, creamy lemony sauce)
• Soups like avgolemono (egg-lemon soup) and fasolada (beansoup)
• Pasta like spaghetti napolitano, pastitsio (baked layers of thick pasta and minced meat mixture topped with a thick béchamel sauce)
• Seafood like baked fresh fish, fried salt cod served with skordalia (garlic sauce), fried squid and octopus
• Baked dishes (magirefta) including different seasonal vegetable dishes like moussaka (eggplant or zucchini, minced meat, and béchamel sauce)
• Grilled dishes like souvlaki
• Wines including retsina, mavrodafni and other Greek red/white wines
• Beer
• Alcoholic drinks called "spirits" like ouzo, tsipouro and brandy
• Fruit
• Desserts like baklava, galaktoboureko, etc.

Hours

Tavernes usually open at noon with dinner hours starting at 20:00 and reaching a peak around 22:00. As tourism has grown in Greece, many tavernes have attempted to cater to foreign visitors with English menus and "shills" being hired in many tavernes to attract passing tourists. Tavernes in tourist areas pay commissions to tour guides who send business their way.

In literature and art

The main character in the play and film Shirley Valentine written by Willy Russell leaves her husband and family in Liverpool for a vacation where she has an affair with a waiter at the taverna and ends up working in the taverna.

Gallery

• 
  A taverna in the Anemomilos district of Corfu town.
• 
  Choriatiki, a Greek salad typically served at a taverna.

References

Sources

• Cox, Anthony (2001). Still Life in Crete: A Singular View. Parkland, FL: Universal Publishers. ISBN 1-58112-691-3.
• Dalby, Andrew (1996). Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-13-496985-2.
• Hiestand, Emily (2003). "Lessons from the Taverna". In Haberger, Larry; O'Reilly, Sean; Alexander, Brian S. (eds.). Travelers' Tales Greece: True Stories. Travelers Tales. pp. 65–74. ISBN 1-885211-99-6.
• Riggs, Thomas (1999). Contemporary Dramatists (6th ed.). Detroit, MI: St. James Press. ISBN 978-1-55-862371-2.
• Shear, T. Leslie (1975). "The Athenian Agora: Excavations of 1973–1974" (PDF). Hesperia. 44 (4): 331–374. doi:10.2307/147506. JSTOR 147506.

Further reading

• Stone, Tom (2002). The Summer of My Greek Taverna: A Memoir. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0-74-324771-9.

Other websites

• Soc.Culture.Greek FAQ (Tourist Information)