A culinary homage to Asia Minor
Gastronomos magazine awards mark 100th anniversary of the arrival of refugee Greeks
The 15th Quality Awards of the influential Gastronomos food magazine, published by Kathimerini, had a special emotional touch this year as it coincided with the 100th anniversary of the Asia Minor Catastrophe.
Held on Monday in the northern port city of Thessaloniki, the ceremony was dedicated to the Greeks of Asia Minor, honoring producers and businesses from all over Greece with ancestral roots in Turkey.
The choice of Thessaloniki to host the ceremony was a poignant one, as it was the city that welcomed perhaps the largest wave of refugees in the aftermath of the 1922 Greco-Turkish War, who, to a large extent, shaped its social, cultural and culinary identity. Moreover, Thessaloniki was the first city to join the UNESCO World Network of Creative Cities in the field of gastronomy.
More than one million Greek Orthodox natives of Asia Minor, Thrace and the Black Sea areas fled to Greece between 1914-1923 and during the 1919-1922 Greco-Turkish War.
Echoing the sentiment of the occasion, Thessaloniki Mayor Konstantinos Zervas stressed that it was not only an occasion “to recall memories, to feel nostalgia, to honor all those people who introduced all these traditions, such quality into our cuisine and in everyday life, the people of Asia Minor, but also to talk about the present and the future of this city, which has demonstrated that it knows how to cook, to create and to look to the future with great optimism.”
For his part, Kathimerini Executive Editor Alexis Papachelas noted in his greeting that “there is so much production, so much power in northern Greece, it was self-evident that the event should take place in Thessaloniki at some point.”
The ties between Thessaloniki and the Greek communities of Asia Minor and the Black Sea were also referred to by Gastronomos’ editorial staff.
“In the 17 years of Gastronomos’ life, there has been no point where we did not come upon our Asia Minor heritage and the tremendous influence that Asia Minor culture has had on our cuisine. The wave of refugees that burst over 100 years ago on this side of the Aegean brought knowledge, know-how, products and culinary skills, with a cuisine that is huge, strong and important,” said the editor-in-chief of the publication, Angelos Rentoulas.
This year’s ceremony was also special because it was held at the historic Modiano Market, which reopened after an ambitious six-year renovation.
