The first book about the souvlaki
Souvlaki is undeniably the most popular food in Greece, affordable enough for anyone to purchase, and certainly the most renowned Greek street food globally.
Despite its humble and often overlooked status, souvlaki is a highly gastronomic dish, cleverly designed to satiate your hunger while letting you savor its delicious ingredients. This is probably why, until now, no one has taken the time to seriously study its origins and history.
The souvlaki we know today, wrapped in a pita, is a relatively recent development. However, the concept of skewered meat dates back thousands of years, as far back as the Homeric epics, and to the clay grills of Thera where the ancients prepared souvlaki.
The book Souvlaki – A gastronomic journey from the Homeric epics to modern street food provides comprehensive research on souvlaki spanning several years. It’s the first global study of its kind, offering information and data from 3,500 years ago, proving that souvlaki has always been a part of Greek culture. The book also includes numerous accounts about souvlaki in Athens, from its emergence in modern times to the present day.
Kallithea was one of the first areas to embrace souvlaki in the post-war period. Here’s an excerpt from the chapter on memories of souvlaki in Athens:
Initially, souvlaki was simpler than it is now. It consisted of meat, a couple of tomato pieces, oregano, salt, red pepper, and onion. If you wanted, you could add red sauce. Then someone introduced tzatziki. I still enjoy skewers quite often. I always eat it with my hands. No tzatziki and no potatoes, just simple. I don’t want my kebabs to resemble a sausage.
E. Zachos Papazachariou, a writer, folklorist, and researcher, shares his memories of souvlaki in Kallithea during his childhood and youth: “Souvlaki has a history that dates back to the early ’50s, possibly even the late ’40s. It didn’t just magically appear out of Zeus’s thigh. It required the development of suitable infrastructure to transition from preparation to street consumption.
“The needs that led to its invention were paramount. The requirements of school children and adults in the marketplace. The needs of the children came first. After the war and the Civil War, there was a heightened concern about tuberculosis, which resulted in children receiving extra care. The fear of tuberculosis, particularly its severe ‘galloping’ form, led mothers to overfeed their children between meals. They would also send them to school with what was known as ‘brunch,’ which initially was nothing more than bread and cheese. The traditional “brunch” was to be replaced by cheese pie, a key player in the invention of souvlaki.
The driving force behind this culinary innovation was a universal need, devoid of any connection to fear or phobia. It was the simple, primal hunger one experiences while wandering around the market before noon. This was the need that the cheese pie came to satisfy.
Cheesecake makers became local celebrities, recognized in neighborhoods and farmers’ markets, their fame largely dependent on the quality of their own unique cheesecakes. This was because cheese pies were not mass-produced by bakeries, they were not standardized. The bakers of that era specialized in bread. Cheesecake makers crafted their cheese pies, baking them at home and transporting them to markets and schools in wooden carts equipped with pans of burning coals to keep the pies warm. In the summer, these carts transformed into ice-cream parlors. The coal pan was replaced by a pillar of ice next to the ice cream bucket. These carts later provided the infrastructure for transporting and preparing skewers. The birth of this culinary phenomenon took place in the early 1950s in neighborhoods with farmers’ markets. In my neighborhood, Kallithea, two cheesemongers reigned supreme: Uncle Kyriakos and Jordan. Barba-Kyriakos was a Pontian from Russia and Jordan was a Pontian from Pontus. Their origins mattered because the Russian-Pontian referred to the cheese pies by their Russian name, ‘piroski’, while the Pontian used the Greek name, ‘tyropites’. Jordan strived to match the deliciousness of Uncle Kyriakos’s “piroski”, which led to his creation of… souvlaki. He drew inspiration from a Pontian and Turkish dish named “shish kebab”, meaning skewered meat. Jordan added a charcoal fire to his cart alongside the cheese pies and grilled the shish kebabs. He then took this new offering to the schools for a trial run. The children loved this new treat, even those who were loyal to their brunch bread and butter. Jordan then introduced shish kebab to the marketplace, where it was met with immense enthusiasm. It even inspired a song by Yota Lydia, featuring a chorus about shish kebab peppered with suggestive innuendo. Eventually, Jordan stopped making cheesecake altogether and dedicated himself to shish kebab. He moved the charcoal grill from inside his cart to the surface, allowing customers to watch their skewers being cooked, adding an extra layer of spectacle to the experience. He served the skewered kebabs in halved loaves, with onions, parsley, and perhaps slices of tomato.
It’s worth noting that the Kallithea market, operating daily rather than weekly, served many neighborhoods. These included Harokopou, Taurus (then known as Sfageia), Agialeousa, Nea Smyrni, all the way to Armenika (now called Neos Kosmos), and stretching from Thiseos to Sofokleous on Filaretou Street, parallel to Davaki Street. The vendors were located in the large square bordered by Davaki and Skra, Sygrou Avenue and Thiseos. Interestingly, this was a square that the Germans never entered during the Occupation, as it was surrounded by barbed wire.
In the late 1950s, the shish kebab was rechristened with the Greek name “souvlaki”. This was a time when Athens and other major cities were experiencing a significant wave of internal migration. Shish kebab, which referred to spit-roasted and skewered meat, became the preferred meal of these internal migrants. It held symbolic significance as well, given its resemblance to a miniature spit. Concurrently, it was paired with pita, another staple of the migrant diet. Thus, the souvlaki was born, wrapped in pita and taking on the form we recognize today. It became a convenient lunch option for those unable to return home for a midday meal.
Then came the first wave of tourists who found in souvlaki an intriguing blend of exoticism and familiarity — a welcome departure from the soups and sausages that constituted their everyday meals back home. The influx of tourists gave a fresh boost to the popularity of souvlaki. Specialized souvlaki shops started appearing along major tourist routes, and the production of souvlaki began to be industrialized. The rotating spit was invented, initially manually operated, often by a child using a crank. Later, an electrically-powered machine was developed to turn the spit. By the 1960s and 1970s, souvlaki shops had sprung up in neighborhoods all across Athens, and continue to do so even today, such as on Tsakalof Street, in Kolonaki Square. Today, souvlaki is widely accepted as a beloved, affordable street food staple.
Stories from Kallithea, one of the first districts in Athens where souvlaki gained popularity, suggest that skewers suddenly appeared in the mid-1950s outside a local cinema. “On the corner of Esperidon and Harokopou streets stood the oldest cinema in Kallithea, the ‘Crystal'”, recounts 80-year-old Mr. Antonis, a lifelong resident of Kallithea. “On this corner, a young man named George would sell nuts from a portable cart to moviegoers. One day, George showed up with his cart, but instead of nuts, he was selling skewers. That’s where I first tasted a skewer. George had modified his cart to grill skewers over charcoal right there on the street. A skewer cost one and a half drachmas. George, a poor man with a wife and two kids, was able to earn more money selling souvlaki. To give you an idea, we could buy a bag of sunflower seeds for half a drachma, while a skewer of souvlaki cost one and a half drachmas.”
At some point, he rented a small storefront and opened a souvlaki shop, likely the first of its kind in Kallithea.
“Back then, on Harokopou Street, at the intersection with Aristeidou, where a nursery now stands, there used to be a charcoal shop. This was a common sight at the time, as both homes and businesses used charcoal for cooking. These charcoal shops also sold wine from barrels. Eventually, the charcoal shop closed down, and in its place, someone opened a souvlaki shop. It was one of the first in Kallithea. My friends and I, who were around sixteen or seventeen at the time, started frequenting this place and stopped using the main road. The shop had a jukebox where we would listen to the popular hits of the time. However, it was never a place to take a date. In those days, on a Saturday night, we would dress up in suits and taking your girlfriend to a kebab shop was considered too cheap. You would be teased by your friends with comments like, “Did you take her out for kebabs?” Plus, there was always the risk of getting stained by the fat. The souvlaki charcoal shop met an unfortunate end when, during an inspection, cat meat was discovered in the refrigerator!
“In the early 1970s, kebabs made their debut in Kallithea. The first kebab shop, called “Kallithea”, opened on Sivitanidou Street, nestled within a row of houses. The burgers were made from a mix of lamb, sheep, and beef, and served on a pie with chopped roasted tomato and onion, garnished with parsley. It was the most affordable souvlaki in Kallithea. Initially, customers would eat their meal standing up or take it home, as there were no delis yet. However, as time went on, the shops began to set up tables.
“The first person to make pies in Kallithea was Georgios Kaloidas. Today, his sons run the ELVIART company, producing pies for souvlaki which they export worldwide. Kaloidas was the pioneer of the first exclusive pie shop, succeeding their family bakery that had been operating since 1922. Today, they own 12 franchise shops in Spain. The souvlaki shops were a goldmine for the entrepreneurs of the time, as souvlaki was popular for being affordable, nutritious, and filling.” Mr Antonis fondly recalls a schoolmate who struggled academically. “When we finished school, specifically sixth grade high school, my classmate, who lived in Taurus, had a sister who was married to a butcher. It was the first year of the Panhellenic exams and he didn’t make it to university. That year, he and his brother-in-law opened a souvlaki shop in Nikaia, on a bend, where customers ate standing up. After two years, while we were still studying and living off pocket money, he was driving around in a Citroën frog, all thanks to the souvlaki shop! At that time, grilled meat was a popular choice and those who ventured into the souvlaki business not only became wealthy, but incredibly rich. “I recall a souvlaki shop in Koumoundourou Square selling 2,000 souvlakis a day!” Kallithea was a blue-collar neighborhood, and it’s no surprise that souvlaki, the quintessential worker’s food, originated there before spreading to other parts of Athens. “The people of Kallithea have always had a fondness for souvlaki, and that hasn’t changed,” shares Antonis. “Kolonaki wasn’t a souvlaki-eating locale. It was more of a bacchanalia. Then came the shops in Omonia and Monastiraki, where tourists first discovered the dish.”
“In its early days, souvlaki was much simpler than it is today. It consisted of meat, which was the main component, two or three pieces of tomato, oregano, salt, red pepper, and onion. If preferred, you could add red sauce. Then came the invention of tzatziki. I still regularly enjoy skewers. I always eat it handheld, without tzatziki or potatoes. I prefer it simple; I don’t want my kebab to resemble a knockwurst.”
This article was originally published in the print edition of LiFO.
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