Tom Stone - The summer of my Greek taverna: a memoir

Praise for The Summer of My Greek Tavrna

A colorful and richly observed memoir.

Smithsonian magazine

His memoir of that summer peppered with his favorite recipes, Tavrna is an armchair travelers passport to some tasty-sounding meals.

Entertainment Weekly

The summers best travel writing

Time

Well and honestly written

Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

His infatuation with the place (whether fueled by an excess of retsina or not) is infectious.

The New York Times Book Review

If you are stuck in a 9 to 5 job, and cannot take a long vacation this year, The Summer of My Greek Tavrna is just the read for you reminiscent of Zorbas Greece and makes you want to visit, but only as a tourist, to enjoy the islands, the tavrnas, and the beautiful beaches.

United Press International

A delightful froth of a book for anyone who has ever visited or dreamed of visiting a Greek isle. For those who never thought about it, The Summer of My Greek Tavrna is a wake-up call. Take it along on your vacation. Itll help you unwind. Try the recipes when you get home.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In this feast for all senses Stone brings readers into the tiny Greek island world of Patmos in a prose that feels as languid as the pace of the Patmian people. This nicely told memoir and travelogue is interspersed with Stones recipes, sensual descriptions of food and place, and the love of his wife and children.

Publishers Weekly

Patmos, the small Greek island where St. John lived and wrote, is the setting of this brief but charming autobiographical travelog with recipes.

Library Journal

A sumptuous getaway dashed with enough hardy reality to give the book body and staying power Readers who consume the book will no doubt be sated.

Associated Press

A welcome entry in the armchair-travel stakes refreshes like a glass of cold water I warm to a man who without bitterness returns to teaching ESL after one summer of running a Greek tavrna, and who generously bequeaths his handful of trusty recipes to his readers.

The Sydney Morning Herald

A LSO BY T OM S TONE

Armstrong

Greece: An Illustrated History

Greek Dictionary and Phrasebook

The Essential Greek Handbook

Patmos: A History and Guide

SIMON & SCHUSTER PAPERBACKS
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

Copyright 2002 by Tom Stone www.SimonandSchuster.com

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

First Simon & Schuster paperback edition 2003

S IMON & S CHUSTER P APERBACKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales: 1-800-456-6798 or business@simonandschuster.com.

Designed by Jan Pisciotta

Maps by Jeff Ward, based on original maps by Tom Stone

Manufactured in the United States of America

5 7 9 10 8 6 4

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Stone, Tom.

The summer of my Greek tavrna / Tom Stone.

p. cm.

1. Patmos Island (Greece)Description and travel. 2. Stone, TomJourneys GreecePatmos Island. 3. RestaurantsGreecePatmos Island. 4. Cookery, Greek. I. Title.

DF901.P27 S76 2002

647.9549587dc21 2002021209

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-0541-2

ISBN-10: 0-7432-0541-3

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-4771-9 (Pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-7432-4771-X (Pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-4771-9

eISBN-13: 978-1-439-10843-7

Acknowledgments

To my agent, Liza Dawson, for her many excellent suggestions during the writing of this book and for her continual faith that I would be able to accomplish what Id set out to do. To my editor, Sydny Miner, for taking it mostly on faith and for the best and most gentle job of editing I could possibly have imagined. To Dick Wimmer, Mary Hurst, and Maxine Nunes for their crucial creative input and encouragement throughout the writing. To Armistead Maupin for getting it off the ground when it was only an idea born in an airport bookstore, and to Joan Tewksbury for immediately and wholeheartedly falling in love with it.

But most of all, to Florence and Samantha and Oliver, for all the best of reasons.

Dedication

To Robert Lax (1915-2000) and the people of Patmos

Authors Note

Recipes for virtually all the dishes mentioned in the story can be found in the Extra Helpings section (page 201).

The sometimes rather free translations of Cavafys poems are wholly my responsibility.

Contents

In the Same Space

Houses, cafs, neighborhoods, spaces I have seen and walked through all these years,

you I have created in happiness and sorrow: in such detail, such detail,

that you are transformed completely into feeling, for me.

C. P. CAVAFY

Helen
I never went to Troy; it was a phantom

Servant
What? You mean that it was only for a cloud that we struggled so much?

EURIPIDES, Helen

The Summer of My Greek Tavrna

Preface

If you visit the Greek island of Patmos today, you will not find a restaurant named The Beautiful Helen nor a farming valley and beach called Livdi. These and the names of the people in my story I have changed to protect the privacy of the latter, most of whom are either still living on the island or regularly visiting it.

Nevertheless, the details about Patmos and its legends are all true, as are those about my attempt, one summer not too long ago, to run a tavrna there. In fact, if you go and sit awhile in any small restaurant on the island, you will find that itand all the other tavrnas throughout Greece, for that matteris pretty much like The Beautiful Helen. Doubtless, even when St. John first arrived on Patmos in 95 A.D. , such a place was already in business, welcoming strangers with open arms, eager to hear their news of the outside world and ready to supply them with a cup of wine and a good bite to eat.

And perhaps at a corner table, there was someone like the man I have called Theolgos, waiting to teach them a lesson.

Appetizers

Gods Word

The phone rang just as I was about to leave home and trudge through the raw Cretan winter to my tutoring job. The school where I worked was half a mile away, housed in a gray concrete building in the modern part of Rethymnon, along the highway just outside the old city gates. It was a private establishment, a cluster of shabby rooms on the buildings second floor, where my Greek colleagues and I would spend each late afternoon and evening teaching English as a Foreign Language. Our pupils were mostly listless civil servants looking to move up the pay scale and high school students hoping for careers as guides, bank clerks, and tourist police. The pay was minimal, and the blackboards sprayed with so many layers of pale green paint that writing on them was often like trying to use chalk on the side of a cargo ship.