Whetting the appetite

Here’s how the right connections helped teach a food snob how to love culinary-focused excursions

When my wife, Ann, gave me a food tour for my birthday on my first day in Athens a few years ago, I groaned inwardly. “Oh, great. Thank you!” I said. I didn’t have anything against food tours. I’d seen gaggles of food tourists in my Greenwich Village, N.Y., neighborhood, often clogging the sidewalk in front of Murray’s Cheese with a guide shouting to be heard above the din on Bleecker Street, and they seemed to be having a swell time. But I’ve been writing about food for 25 years. I’ve authored many cookbooks, both my own and with revered chefs. I’ve worked as a professional cook and logged too many hours to count in some of the country’s best kitchens.

When I travel, I want to search out where the locals eat, and eat as they eat, among them, not isolated in a crowd of tourists. And not marching from one shop to another behind an umbrella-toting guide. I didn’t need a food tour.

But on that hot August morning, Ann and I met our guide at the fountain in Syntagma Square in the center of Athens. Tiama Kolikopoulou, in her mid-30s, wore a short, black dress, a broadbrimmed black hat and a red bandana around her neck. She carried a canvas tote with the name of the tour company she freelanced for, Greeking.me, so that we and the eight other tourists would recognize The Guide.

After introductions, Kolikopoulou produced a world map. We were about to taste Athens, she said, and so we must first understand the cultural influences that swept through the area during the centuries since Socrates and Euclid trod the rocky Acropolis above us 2,500 years ago. Since then, Greece, a central shipping zone in the middle of the Mediterranean, has been buffeted by food cultures from all sides — the Middle East, Africa and Europe — and all influence the food.

Our first stop was at a small stand in the square selling koulouri, the Middle Eastern sesame-coated bread, a common breakfast snack on the go. We walked next to Karakoy Gulluoglu, a pastry shop. I’m not a fan of pastries, but when Kolikopoulou passed around tavuk gogsu ,a sweet, vanilla custard with a brûléed top, and asked us to identify the main ingredient, I took the challenge. And was stumped.

“Chicken,” she said happily. And off we went, to a small store selling only olives, then to a shop where we tasted examples of Grecian charcuterie and cheese: soutzouki (dry-cured sausage), loza (like the Italian lonza, dry-cured pork loin), pastourmas (dry-cured beef, but sometimes camel), dolmadakia (stuffed grape leaves) and a smoked cheese called metsovone. I wrote a bestselling book called “Charcuterie,” but I had no idea camel was dry cured. We sampled not simply really good Greek yogurt but what Kolikopoulou said was some of the best yogurt in Greece.

I would have found the main central market, Varvakios, on my own — one of the best ways to

STEPHEN HILTNER THE NEW YORK TIMES Varvakios, the main central market in Athens. It was there, at a diner, where food writer Michael Ruhlman was led to discover some traditional Greek dishes.

ADRIAN WILSON THE NEW YORK TIMES A vendor carves meat in Mexico City.