Christopher Bakken

Mollie Katzen

Combining the best of memoir, travel literature, and food writing, Christopher Bakken delves into one of the most underappreciated cuisines in Europe in this rollicking celebration of the Greek table. He explores the traditions and history behind eight elements of Greek cuisine—olives, bread, fish, cheese, beans, wine, meat, and honey—and journeys through the country searching for the best examples of each. He picks olives on Thasos, bakes bread on Crete, eats thyme honey from Kythira with one of Greece’s greatest poets, and learns why Naxos is the best place for cheese in the Cyclades. Working with local cooks and artisans, he offers an intimate look at traditional village life, while honoring the conversations, friendships, and leisurely ceremonies of dining around which Hellenic culture has revolved for thousands of years. A hymn to slow food and to seasonal and sustainable cuisine, Honey, Olives, Octopus is a lyrical celebration of Greece, where such concepts have always been a simple part of living and eating well.

Adventures at the Greek Table

Honey, Olives, Octopus

Both an account of travel and a collection of ecstatic lyrics, these poems excavate an idea of place, one layered deep for the poet and archeologist to discover. Looking through these poems into artifacts and ruined places, we hear "spirits of that barren landscape call out still," and we feel, again and again, what connects us to the past is stronger than what separates us from it.

Christopher Bakken

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