A Greek morning brought home

From sesame bread rings to flaky spinach pies, a warm Greek morning arrives in town

Through these dishes, we hope to share the flavours and traditions of Greece with Indian diners, while adapting them thoughtfully to local tastes- Amitabh Negi, CEO, Coffee Island

In Thessaloniki, the morning still starts with street sellers walking about with trays of koulouri, the sesame bread rings people grab on their way to the office, and that same bread, pronounced koo-loo-ree as the menu card kindly points out, has now landed at Coffee Island in Greater Kailash II, a café that stays open day and night.

The coffee chain from Patras has brought a Greek menu to its cafés in Delhi NCR, Pune and Mumbai, and it borrows from an old way of eating in Greece, where breakfast is a small affair eaten on the move with a coffee that can last half the morning, which fits rather well with a city where so many people now take their work to a café table.

Cretan farmers used to carry hard barley rusks out to the fields and wet them with a little water and the tomatoes from their gardens, and that is where the Dakos salad began, and here it arrives much the same way, a crisp rusk buried under chopped tomatoes, feta, ricotta, black olives and capers, crunchy round the sides and gone soft and sour-sweet at the centre. The spanakopita is the pie Greek bakeries keep stacked by the window, with a gold, papery crust that breaks the moment the fork goes in and a warm, salty spinach filling underneath. The koulouri, split down the middle like a bun, makes a fat sandwich of spiced paneer or chicken ham with cream cheese, sun-dried tomatoes and pickles, and the gyros, wrapped tight in soft pita with paneer or chicken, hummus and a smear of paprika aioli, turns up with a heap of fries and a bowl of tzatziki that cools everything down.

The sweet side of the menu is short, a slab of karidopita, the walnut cake that sits soaked in syrup and smells faintly of cinnamon, and kourabiedes, the almond butter cookies Greek families make at Christmas, which come buried under so much icing sugar that some of it always lands on the shirt, and either one is reason enough to stay on for a second coffee. Those who cannot get to Greece for breakfast will find that Greece has made the trip to Delhi instead.

Koulouri History

• Street vendors originally sold these baked rings during the Byzantine era, and fleeing refugees finally brought the recipe straight into Thessaloniki in 1922.
• The very oldest discovered written mention of this daily bread dates back to 1525 inside the bustling food markets of historical Constantinople city.
• Vendors once balanced fresh rings on their heads in tavades; today, tourism boards call it the ultimate Greek breakfast alongside a morning coffee.