Feasting and trekking for Greek Easter
Nowhere celebrates Greece's biggest religious festival quite like Corfu. Plus: what I've been drinking this week
THE staff in the taverna where we ate dinner were visibly tired. And then at about 9pm, the time Greeks normally start thinking about eating, they began turning away diners and shutting up shop. The reason was there to see in the whole lambs roasting on the grill and the cauldron of magiritsa soup (lamb offal with avgolemono sauce) on the range: this was Greek Easter Saturday, when Orthodox Christians break their fast at midnight. After days of celebrations already, the restaurant would be opening up again in three hours’ time to feed hungry revellers.
Even in a country where Easter looms unusually large as a celebration compared to western Europe, the inhabitants of the Ionian island of Corfu take it to a level rarely seen in the rest of Greece. We arrived in Corfu town on the afternoon of Greek Good Friday (3 May this year) and already the streets were thronged with marching bands, schoolchildren and boy scouts in uniforms – and just a lot of very dressed up Corfiots. At an invisible signal, the marchers in Dimarchiou Square set off. Meanwhile many others in the overwhelmingly Greek crowds were already settling down to the serious business of drinking, snacking and socialising.
Many Greek tourists come to Corfu for Easter, and especially the celebrations of the next day, Megalo Savvato (Holy Saturday). At 11am all over Corfu, people throw cheap red-painted, water-filled clay pots out of their windows to smash on the street below (the origins of this custom are not entirely clear.) The biggest crowds, in their thousands, gather to watch an especially large batch of earthenware being hurled several stories from apartments above the Liston arcade. But trekking in Corfu for the next few days along the Corfu Trail, we were constantly stepping over red pottery shards in village streets.
Next come the marching bands again, brass bands dressed in pre-World War I-style uniforms, criss-crossing Corfu town centre, the crowded streets somehow parting to admit them. Almost every restaurant is completely booked out for lunch and dinner. And then that Holy Saturday night-time celebration, with thousands of revellers clutching candles (yes, even this atheist), watching an astonishing firework display across Spaniou Square, and then when church bells ring midnight to announce Christ’s resurrection, spilling out into bars and restaurants and beginning the task of demolishing huge quantities of roast lamb.
We started our walk on Easter Sunday in the mountain village of Pelekas: when we arrived by taxi to drop our bags off before heading south to our starting point, the chef at the Alexandros restaurant, where we were staying, was already well ahead with roasting four whole lambs on spits over a large charcoal grill. Back at the restaurant about seven hours and 22km later, after trudging across the welcoming message whitewashed on the road of Kali Anastasi (Happy Resurrection), we tucked into the lamb with a half litre of nameless Χύμα (ie bulk) red wine.
Food in Corfu is decent, though it suffers from the sad erasure of regional differences that you see everywhere in Greece. Everywhere serves moussaka, souvlakia and taramasalata; you have to look more carefully for regional specialties. Those on Corfu bear a strong italianate influence: the island was ruled by the Venetians for 400 years from the fourteenth to the late eighteenth centuries. Indeed it is one of the few places in what is modern Greece that never fell to the Ottomans, taking a leading role in the Greek revolution and war of independence as a result.
So Corfiots eat quite a lot of pasta (the only pasta normally eaten by Greeks is macaroni in beefy pastitsio bake). I liked spaghetti with pastitsada, essentially a meat ragu traditionally made with cockerel, while sofrito is an even meater dish of veal cooked in wine sauce. And although fried seafood is a staple in seaside Greece, the impressive platter we ate for our last lunch, on the waterfront, was a fritto misto in all but name.
Of the traditional restaurants, the brilliant Marina’s Tavern (Το ταβερνάκι Της Μαρίνας), in Corfu town, has a strong showing of excellent Corfiot-inflected dishes. We enjoyed octopus with fava puree and capers; slow pot-cooked aubergine and tomatoes; and gigantes beans with greens and herbs (rather than the normal tomato sauce.)
So what to drink? Perhaps surprisingly for such a large and fertile island, Corfu is not known for its wines. There are only a handful of producers, and the revolution that has swept Greek wine over the past decade has largely passed it by.
I visited the largest and oldest producer, Theotoky Estate: they farm 17ha of grapes organically to the west of Corfu Town. Their Cuvée Spéciale white, made from Robola, is pleasant, reminiscent of Cephalonian Robolas although without quite the definition, in warmer years: clean, fresh, with honeysuckle notes, I thought it better in wetter years like 2021. Their Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 isn’t bad either, fresh with soft tannins. Otherwise, in my week on Corfu I sampled around four examples of whites made with the local Kakotrygis grape: pleasant enough but really just a curiosity for wine nerds.
Instead, I turned to the rest of Greece in Corfu town’s sprinkling of decent wine lists. At the Venetian Well, one of the island’s best restaurants, sommelier Nikos Kousinidis has assembled a fine list: I drank a Boutari Naoussa Grand Reserve 2016, as elegant and fine boned a Xinomavro as you could wish to open. And at Salto Wine Bar, with another good Greek list, I enjoyed an unusual Mega Spileo Grand Cave Mavro Kalavritino 2015, still so fruity and youthful, despite its age, as well as Dougos Old Vines Rapsani 2022, a classic, herby, Xinomavro-led red.
But Easter on Corfu – indeed anywhere in Greece – is really about atmosphere rather than refinement. And there’s plenty of that. On Easter Monday in Pelekas, we finished our day walk with olives and retsina outside a mini-mart in the main square – only to realise that set-up was under way for a full-scale village dance. So it was that hours later we were dancing in big circles with villagers, fuelled by the inevitable souvlakia from a big grill, and more beer and tsipouro (grappa). In this generous culture, Easter is a time of feasting not to be missed.
What I’ve been drinking this week
Moropoulos Rosé 2021, PGI Arkadia - a delightful Greek rosé from the Peloponnese. This is made from Moschofilero, a grape normally used to make the local Mantinia whites, though its pink-purple skin lends itself to pale rosés too. With a very aromatic nose, hints of roses, this is elegant with red fruit and firm acidity - unusual (Lea & Sandeman, £17.95 - they’re now on to the 2022.)
Joan d’Anguera “Les Maiols” Garnacha 2021, Montsant - I drank a glass of this Catalan red served chilled at Peckham’s coolest wine shop/bar, The Sourcing Table, an arm of top Spanish importer Indigo. I wouldn’t have thought of drinking it chilled but it worked very well: aromatic and pretty, bright, fresh red fruit - delicious (The Sorting Table, £18.70.)
Cayetano del Pino Palo Cortado Solera - Palo Cortado is my favourite style of aged sherry, and Cayetano specialise in older ones: the wines in this have an average age of about 17 years. Rich but dry, nutty and complex - and so long. Serious stuff. (Waitrose, £15.99/37.5cl; The Wine Society usually stock it too but are out at present.)