Monica, Shota, and I spent the last week of July touring the Cyclades on a 51 foot Alfa (ocean cruising sailboat) with a fantastic Obelixan skipper - Babys, and 3 new Greek friends - Apostolous, Ilias, and Kostis. Flying in to Athens, we met the boat at Paros, after a three hour high speed ferry ride from Piraeus (the port of Athens), to begin a casual tour of some stunning Cycladean islands.
We came to eat and we were excited about fish, octopus, and sea urchins. I even brought my dive gear and fishing rods to see if I could help in the harvest. We had moderate success while diving and fishing, but we had a challenging time finding fresh seafood at restaurants.
The first fish I saw in Greece were at a great salumerie in Milos (our first island stop) which was about a block away from the center of the port (and a fantastic bakery – see photo). There was a broad selection of what appeared to be local (no brand) well packaged beautiful fish, squid, and octopus. This strong frozen selection and Babys’ selection of ouzo mezze from the same store (canned seafood and smoked cheese) should have been an indication as to how the fish markets work in remote Cycladean islands and how our week of fish eating would be.
There was fishing on the islands and I saw two traditional methods: drop lines and gill nets. The drop lines were fished with monofilament and small baited hooks attached in series on a long stretch and monitored by pairs of fishermen in small (<15 foot) boats that I would not like to be in outside of protected waters. The gill nets were bright yellow and handled on specialized boats about the size of lobster trawlers.
I never saw a prize catch. Instead I saw lots of small (~8-10 inch) fish of mixed variety sold from the boats in quantities of about a dozen and carried un-refrigerated (no ice) in plastic shopping bags to what inevitably was the house of a local. I would consider these fish by-catch or trash fish: small, mixed species, nominally fish: probably not the intended catch, but ended up dead in the boat. In Miami, we complain if we find them on the end of our line; in Japan, I am sure they are a delicacy (the rarer and smaller the better); and in Greece, they probably make a great soup.
I also tried my luck at fishing and diving. I caught a few 10 inch grouper in the port at Milos and a lizard fish during a post partying dawn at Folegandros, but I could not catch anything worth keeping. On the other hand, a mate on the Shiraz, a luxury sailboat with Spanish owners which we met in Milos, had some success trolling large bright Rapalas on his way to the island, with 4 20+ pound tunas in the fridge.
Diving was different. I never saw an octopus, but the upper depths were littered with sea urchins, so I knocked free and collected as many as I could during the half hour free diving segments in the frigid clear Mediterranean Sea. Our first try at Folegandros yielded dozens of beautiful black urchins, a pen shell, and a scallop that looked like a rock. I had seen a small cuttlefish, but they are really difficult to catch with your bare hands! Back at the boat, we had scallop with lemon juice (divine), and I was pleasantly surprised to find a pair of breeding (the female had eggs) clear shrimp living in our pen shell (also eaten). They were great live and immediate.
The urchins were no fun. Even though they were beautiful, not all of them had the orange uni stuff we were looking for, and if they did, they looked anemic. It wasn’t until Sikinos were I grabbed some large white-spined specimens that we had a better uni hit rate and greater uni yield. From our results, I would guess that uni success is as much a function of species as it is of gender? We never looked at any menus (we were with Greeks), but we were never offered sea urchins.
Monica and I requested fish every day at every island, but did not fully realize that we would have a difficult time finding it until we reached the most remote island we visited, Sikinos, and realized that we had eaten nothing but lamb and goat all week long.
The one chance we had at eating fish on the islands seemed to have been through a promise from Babys: if we planned a trip early enough to Sikinos, he could reserve fish from the day’s catch for our dinner. Unfortunately, the hangover delays precluded this possibility. I assumed there was a limited number of fish caught and consumed on the island, and that we just needed to claim our share, but when I thought a bit more about the market dynamics, it seemed like there may be another answer for why we couldn’t find the fish we so eagerly sought on the islands we visited, and I wanted to answer a simple question: Where could I get fish? If they weren’t reserved and we could not find them in the restaurants, where did the fish go?
Apparently, there are two types of fish (famously complained about by Greek locals), the premium fresh fish, usually prized species, kept fresh and prepared as a delicacy for prices quoted at 50 Euros +, and the affordable mass market frozen and canned seafood that is ubiquitous and delicious. What we did not realize was that a week cruising among remote Cycladean islands would bring us the latter. The remote islands we visited had the majority of their supplies brought in from the outside, and were almost solely visited by Greek tourists, who are probably less willing to pay the inflated prices guaranteed for fresh fish during the peak tourist season at other sites.
Our experience in the islands was an apparent lesson in market economics:
• If you want fresh seafood, catch it yourself.
• If there is a more lucrative market for seafood, that is probably were the best quality goes.
Luckily the trip still had some food highlights, but it was amazing that we had to return to Paros, which seemed like a suburb of Athens (high school cliques at bars), to find where the market deposited the fish we sought.
On our last night in Paros together we found our first great seafood meal at the Ouzeri Apostolis restaurant. It began with the local octopus delicacy which is brushed with olive oil and dried in the sun for a few days (according to Babys) and grilled just before it is served. We had seen a tourist depiction at a pleasant café on the Milos boardwalk, but this was our first successful eating. The meal climaxed with a wonderfully cooked, grilled, juicy, red snapper (fangri in Greek, almost identical to tai in Japan, nothing like Atlantic red snapper) served with a lemon olive oil dressing, and my favorite memory is of pulling the head in half (longwise) and sucking on one of the juiciest grilled fish I have ever had.
The best was apparently saved for last. The rest of the group had left us, Ilias and Kostis for work, Apostolous and Shota to Mykonos to try some last attempt slutting, so Monica and I found ourselves with a beautiful day to wander Paros’ neighborhoods. After some mandatory (for me) shopping and a full meal at a great local gourmet café selected by Apostolous (Distrato- coolest temperature on Paros), we found ourselves on a small beach with a number of tables outdoors and selected the most pleasant looking one (Glaukos). We were stuffed, but planned on reading our thick books with mezze and ouzo all afternoon long. I was reading the Fagles Odyssey again (which I love), but was startled from the epic when godly chipirones (baby squid) deposited themselves on the table of the only other guests on this seashore. We quickly ordered our own, and were served them fried in a pile: fresh, uncleaned, and with a thick crumbing. Monica and I attacked (too quickly for cameras), and it wasn’t until I explained that the broad range in flavors of the plate in front of us was due to the fresh intestinal contents each squid contained, that I was able to grab the lion’s share.
Interestingly, I had a similar experience in Hokkaido (the northernmost island of Japan), where okasan and I had a horribly difficult time finding premium uni (sea urchin) and ikura (salmon roe) even though Hokkaido is the famous source. Hokkaido is also remote, harsh, and visited mostly by local (Japanese) tourists. The inability to get premium products at the source is a strange artifact of an efficient market, but gives me confidence that money can buy quality foods (even if they are a day older). Could Argentina’s beef be another model of this, where all the cuts considered “best” in export markets are not available in local cuisines? Ever seen a large Key West Pink Shrimp in Key West? What exactly was that trash fish soup the local was making?
Refreshingly, the Cyclades were fantastic, and we have many stunning memories of rakomelo nights and wine dark seas. I think there are probably places that combine the strengths of the market with the benefits of being close by (experience, freshness, price, etc.), and it seems as though Paros fits that role for the Cyclades - maybe Sapporo does this for Hokkaido (or is it Tokyo for everything?). Kyoto definitely does it for baby bamboo (sources the best of the region), and (thinking ahead to the next vacation) it gives reason to stopping in Florence during truffle season and not just hanging out in the forests.
