Explore traditional Greek cooking using foraged wild herbs
Host offerings
Meet Maria
Maria is a professional chef who has worked in the culinary world since 1998. She is passionate about Greek cuisine and loves to showcase the unique ingredients and flavors that can be found in the various regions and islands of Greece. She loves creating food that has a strong sense of place by using local ingredients and techniques. Maria has lived on Syros for 9 years and strongly believes the island is a herbal paradise. She now specializes in collecting and using wild herbs and greens in her cooking, along with organic products from local farms, exceptional Cycladic cheeses, spices, and grains which give the dishes a unique, fresh, and often unexpected flavor.
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Maria presents a journey into time, feeling the history and culture of Syros on your plate and enjoying Greek hospitality at its best.
What to expect
Please note menu might vary. If there are particular dishes you are interested in trying, please include your request in the booking form.
In-home meal (1 - 16 guests) Enjoy a traditional Cycladic meal at Maria’s table. Her cooking highlights fresh, organic ingredients and wild herbs. Your meal will be heavily seasonal and you will decide about the menu together. It might include dishes such as black-eyed beans, tomato, zucchini, rocket, purslane and capers salad, fava "padremeni" (yellow split peas from Iraklia island served with slowly cooked onions, sun-dried capers and sun-dried tomato), vlita (local greens) with tyrovolia (local cheese from Syros island) and petroti (Cycladic cheese) baked in the oven with tomatoes, tourlou (a mixture of seasonal vegetables baked with chickpeas), melitzanes Dellagratsiano, a kind of mousaka, aubergines with local cheese, gruyere and San Michali, and tomato sauce and seasonal salads using both foraged ingredients as well as organic, cultivated vegetables. Your meal will end with tea or coffee and a sweet.
Local Greek wine is included in the cost of your experience.
Cooking experience (1 - 16 guests) Depending on the season, your culinary experience begins with a walk near Maria’s home where she will teach you how to identify and gather wild herbs and greens. You will collect herbs like sage, St. John’s wort, sea fennel, and other greens and wild herbs. Maria shares her historical and scientific knowledge about the plants, as well as their use in herbal medicine and how to cook them in unexpected combinations. Once you have collected enough ingredients, you will return to Maria’s home kitchen and learn how to turn these wild plants and organic cultivated vegetables and legumes, into your meal.
This is a hands-on cooking experience and Maria will guide you through the process, sharing cooking techniques, nutritional information, and her stories as you cook together. You’ll prepare a unique, traditional Greek meal that is outside the mainstream of Greek food and highlights local cheeses, vegetables, legumes, and grains. Traditionally meat was used sparingly so the meal will focus on vegetable-rich dishes that are highlighted with meat. Maria is excited to share her culture through food and offers an authentic cooking class in Syros.
Notes: Maria can also provide a French, German, Spanish, and Italian translator for an additional cost. Please email reservations@travelingspoon.com to ask for pricing for a translator. She can also accommodate a vegetarian diet, if informed in advance. Please let her know if you have any dietary restrictions or allergies in advance, while booking your Syros cooking class online.
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Sample menu
This is just a sample menu to give you an idea of the types of dishes the host cooks. Your menu will vary according to seasonal availability.
- Greek wine
- Tea or coffee
- Semolina halva with saffron and sweet red wine
- Wild rock samphire salad with carrots and beetroots and "petimezi" sauce
- Fresh black-eyed peas sautéed in butter and served with tomatoes sauce and local gruyere
- Patates adinaktes, potatoes cooked in red wine with coriander
- Avga tirititim, scrambled eggs with zucchini and wild herbs
- Seasonal peasant's salad decorated with wild flowers and sun-dried capers
GOOD REVIEWS
{ "ambassador" : [{"author_name" : "Rupert", "rating" : 5, "body" : "Maria is both an excellent cook, having had her own restaurant for many years, and an experienced nutritionist. She is also extremely knowledgeable about wild greens, flowers and herbs and their uses in cooking and natural medicine. This makes for an experience which is both gastronomically and intellectually stimulating. On top of this Maria is a very warm, gentle but enthusiastic person to be with. She is also highly professional and committed. Her home, which she shares with her lovely partner Nikos, who is a painter and teacher, is the ground floor of a two-storey house. It is situated in an olive grove and looks south over the sea to the other Cycladic islands. It is a modest, functional home with nothing fancy about its interior decoration. As for the food, the tastes are fresh, varied and often unexpected. It is outside the mainstream of Greek food. There is something inspiring and exhilarating about the simplicity and easy availability (all gathered within 200 yards of the house) of the ingredients and the complexity of the palate. It also looks beautiful on the plate. But probably the best thing of all was Maria sharing her historical and scientific knowledge about the plants we were gathering and eating, which often went beyond the actual food we were preparing. This added an extra layer of pleasure to the experience. "}], "trip_advisor" : [{"author_name" : "OhiwaJo", "rating" : 5, "body" : "The four of us thoroughly enjoyed our day with Maria who is knowledgeable, an experienced cook, a great teacher and a fascinating person. We foraged and cooked and ate and talked and learnt and discussed and laughed and shared. This is a delightful experience on so many levels. If you're considering booking this experience, consider no longer, just do it. There are not enough words to describe this extraordinary woman and her wonderfully wholistic approach to life. Enjoy!"}, {"author_name" : "mmnzsyd", "rating" : 5, "body" : "We spent an incredible day with Maria - she has a wealth of knowledge to share about Greek cooking and traditions, how to forage for and use herbs and spices in cooking as well as for health and well-being, and for being so generous and kind in all she does. The experience that Maria offers is truly one of a kind, leaving you with a greater knowledge, passion and respect for food and cooking, and that simple, quality ingredients cooked with love and care are the most nourishing for body, mind and soul. It was a highlight of our trip to the Greek Islands. We cannot thank Maria and her wonderful helper Eleni enough for such an amazing day - Morgan & Leona"}, {"author_name" : "hillaryfreya", "rating" : 5, "body" : "It's hard to know where to start in describing the experience we had with Maria. To put it simply, we had an incredible, activity packed, 17 day honeymoon in the Greek Islands and my husband and I unanimously agreed that our dinner with Maria and her husband, Nikos was the highlight of our entire trip. If you are the type of traveler who likes to learn something about the people, the history, and the culture of the place where you're vacationing, and someone who loves food, I cannot recommend this experience more. It was my birthday and my husband wanted to set up something special as a surprise. I was dressed and ready for dinner at a restaurant when Maria pulled up in her car to pick us up. I had no idea where we were going or what to expect. She drove us to her house, chatting along the way about who we were, what brought us to Syros, etc. Their house is adorable and the table was set up outside on their terrace, which was lovely and quaint with views of the water (a very romantic setting). What really struck me immediately about Maria was her passion for food and not just for the act of cooking, but the ingredients, the history and culture, the medicinal properties of certain herbs she incorporated, etc. This woman knows food and the way she explained everything to us in detail made the food (which was mind blowingly delicious) that much more special. With each course, Maria explained where the ingredients came from (almost everything was native to Syros), why she made it the way that she did, and often what the history behind the dish was and why it was important to Greek culture. We learned so much! Between courses, Maria and her husband disappeared into their kitchen as they prepared the next round of food, which made for this really nice balance between a romantic and intimate experience for my husband and I and an informative, intellectually stimulating food class. The main course was a veal dish that we learned was an ancient recipe that had originally been found on the wall of a cave dwelling and yet was still prepared by Greeks today--it was delectable. The evening ended with a chocolate souffle cake complete with candles that Maria made to celebrate my birthday. As if that wasn't enough, she also presented me with a gift--a special facial oil to use at night that repairs and rejuvenates the skin (it's amazing..I've been using it ever since!). The cherry on top of the perfect dinner was that Maria and Nikos sat with us at the end and we had an amazing conversation about life, current events, cultural differences between the US and Greece, travel, etc etc. We so enjoyed getting to know them and felt like we were friends who had been invited over for dinner. The feeling we had when Maria dropped us off that evening was something like that feeling you get when you've just discovered this amazing secret that you know most others will never know about or have the opportunity to experience and you're just so thankful that you were lucky enough to somehow be let in on the secret. I'm writing this review so that YOU can be let in on the secret. If you're in Syros, please do yourself a favor and go spend some time with Maria and Nikos. You will learn so much and you will leave feeling more knowledgeable about the amazing island of Syros, the people who call it home, and the food grown/raised there. We can only hope we will someday be lucky enough to find ourselves back in the company of Maria and Nikos, enjoying another incredible meal. It was truly a once in a lifetime experience."}, {"author_name" : "Ralph A", "rating" : 5, "body" : "Spent a wonderful late morning and afternoon preparing and eating brunch with Maria in mid-August 2019. She picked us up at our cruise ship (4 adults). We foraged through a field next to her home. Since it was late summer our foraging was limited to sage, lentil, several seed spices and some leafy greens in a neighbor's watered garden. She supplemented with local produce. Our aproned group of 4 diced, sliced and chopped various ingredients, except for smashing the Greek potatoes. After an hour or so, we sat down at the table in her home and had an enjoyable meal. Maria was previously a chef for 20 years and has taught Greek cooking."}, {"author_name" : "Giuseppe G", "rating" : 5, "body" : "Abbiamo trascorso una giornata bellissima in compagnia di Maria, che con disponibilità , passione, semplicità , competenza e simpatia, ha condiviso con noi le sue grandi conoscenze della natura circostante e ci ha guidati nella preparazione di un pranzo eccellente e genuino. E' stata molto di più di una \" lezione \" di cucina ... E' stata una \" lezione \" di vita ... una esperienza che consigliamo a tutti di donarsi ! Per noi sarà fra i ricordi più belli e preziosi di questo nostro soggiorno a Syros! Grazie ancora a Maria per aver reso possibile tutto questo."}] }
PERSONALLY VETTED REVIEW
A Traveling Spoon ambassador visited this host. Here is their personal review.
Maria is both an excellent cook, having had her own restaurant for many years, and an experienced nutritionist. She is also extremely knowledgeable about wild greens, flowers and herbs and their uses in cooking and natural medicine. This makes for an experience which is both gastronomically and intellectually stimulating. On top of this Maria is a very warm, gentle but enthusiastic person to be with. She is also highly professional and committed. Her home, which she shares with her lovely partner Nikos, who is a painter and teacher, is the ground floor of a two-storey house. It is situated in an olive grove and looks south over the sea to the other Cycladic islands. It is a modest, functional home with nothing fancy about its interior decoration. As for the food, the tastes are fresh, varied and often unexpected. It is outside the mainstream of Greek food. There is something inspiring and exhilarating about the simplicity and easy availability (all gathered within 200 yards of the house) of the ingredients and the complexity of the palate. It also looks beautiful on the plate. But probably the best thing of all was Maria sharing her historical and scientific knowledge about the plants we were gathering and eating, which often went beyond the actual food we were preparing. This added an extra layer of pleasure to the experience.
Rupert, Traveling Spoon Ambassador
