Real Food Summer 2019

Greek Food Today
Diane Kochilas shares delicious twists from her kitchen to yours
BY TARA Q. THOMAS
It was the spanakopita grilled cheese that got me. There, on TV, was Diane Kochilas, often
known as the Greek Food Guru, sandwiching spinach pie filling between two pieces of
bread and giving it the American grilled cheese treatment. It was the sort of riff on a classic
dish that could have come off as sacrilege, but in her hands—broadcast from her Athens,
Greece, kitchen on her own PBS show—it seemed entirely natural, not to mention delicious.
For 30 years, Kochilas has built her career on bringing Greek cuisine to the masses,
whether it’s through books—18 at last count—or on TV, on her own shows as well as those
of stars including Martha Stewart, Bobby Flay and Andrew Zimmern. She has been filing
stories on the country’s foodways for major newspapers and magazines for the three decades,
and has run the Glorious Greek Cooking School on her ancestral island of Ikaria since 2003.
Respected institutions such as the Culinary Institute of America and Harvard have tapped
her for her expertise, and so have numerous restaurateurs. She has consulted for Pylos and
Molyvos, two of the top Greek restaurants in New York City, as well as Avli in Chicago and
Volos in Toronto. She is currently the consulting chef for Committee in Boston.
Her latest book, however, is a departure from her usual deep dive into the specifics of a
place. Instead, it reflects on what she cooks in her own home. “My Greek Table,” a large,
lushly illustrated volume that grew out of her PBS show of the same name, is a fascinating
peek into what real Greek cooking is today. It captures the feel of a cuisine that’s alive and
vital, as diverse as the people who flow through the country and as sensitive to the politics,
economics and time pressures as any. Spanakopita sandwiches instead of a phyllo pie? Heck
yes. And with a side of her tahini-avocado dip, please.
It took Kochilas a while to get to this point. In part, it’s the double-edged sword of being
a foreigner in an adopted land. She is American, the daughter of a Greek immigrant
who married a Greek-Italian from Brooklyn and was born in Queens, the largest borough of
New York City. “My dad cooked—he worked as a cook in the merchant marine—but he passed
away when I was a kid,” she tells me from
Athens, where she has lived since 1992.
While she came to Greek food free from the
constraints that tradition and familiarity
can enforce, she also had to work hard to
discover what the locals know inherently.
Her exposure to real Greek food was limited
until she was 12. “My mother, in her
infinite wisdom, wanted to keep a young
teenager off the streets of New York in the
1970s,” Kochilas explains. “She was a working
mom then, and what was I to do alone in the
summer? So she sent me with my older sister
to Greece.”
She landed in Ikaria, her father’s homeland,
and the connection was instantaneous.
“I can’t even begin to describe it,” Kochilas
says. “I couldn’t even really speak much
Greek. I just remember this feeling of, ‘Wow,
this place is really special.’ ” She continued
to spend nearly every summer in Greece
before heading off to New York University
to study journalism. “I’ve always been a
writer since I was a little kid,” she reflects.
Although she found work as an editor at a
PHOTO THOMAS JASTRAM - ADOBE STOCK
52 real food summer 2019