Treats From Thessaloniki - Scoopy French Fries

Last week I got back from a fun adventure to the city of Thessaloniki.  It's the second largest city in Greece, many consider it to be the cultural hub of Greece, but I would also consider it the baking capital of Greece.  It's not hard to argue that this city has some of the best food in the whole country, yet it's very surprising that more tourists don't come and visit. All this week I've decided that I'm going to highlight some of the food adventures I had on my epic adventure.  Most of the treats featured will be sweet, but not all of them.  What I can guarantee is by the time you read all of these adventures, you might consider a stop in Thessaloniki on your Greek vacation.

For my last post about the wonderful treats I found in Thessaloniki I wanted to get away from sweets.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not turning off sweets, I just thought I'd mention that Thessaloniki also has some great savory foods as well.  Many of the restaurants are spectacular, and the quality of the ingredients in most places is better than many other restaurants in Greece.  Strangely though, my favorite savory food find on this trip was a french fry.  More importantly the french fries from Patatesfritas near the main square.

Two features of this place really stood out for me.  The first feature has to be the shape of their fries.  Instead of giving you the standard straight cut potato, Patatesfritas offers little scoops designed specifically to scoop up your choice of sauces.  The second feature that I really loved was their mayonnaise sauce.  This sauce appears to be a blend of mayonnaise and some kind of cream (yogurt maybe).  It really cut down the oily texture and flavour you get from regular mayonnaise and cooled down my hot fries perfectly.

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Treats From Thessaloniki - Blé

Last week I got back from a fun adventure to the city of Thessaloniki.  It's the second largest city in Greece, many consider it to be the cultural hub of Greece, but I would also consider it the baking capital of Greece.  It's not hard to argue that this city has some of the best food in the whole country, yet it's very surprising that more tourists don't come and visit. All this week I've decided that I'm going to highlight some of the food adventures I had on my epic adventure.  Most of the treats featured will be sweet, but not all of them.  What I can guarantee is by the time you read all of these adventures, you might consider a stop in Thessaloniki on your Greek vacation.

Yesterday I wrote about the best smelling bakery in all of Thessaloniki, the Cookie Man.  Today I'm going to tell you all about the bakery with the best looking treats in all of Thessaloniki, Blé.  This place turns every single baked good into a piece of art.  Even their breads look absolutly stunning.  Best of all the store itself is stylishly decorated and it shows off the visual beauty of their food very well.

While Blé does sell traditional Greek sweets and foods, it's not really their specialty.  Most of their sweets have a French influence.  This is actually a very good demonstration of the difference between French and Greek baking.  Greek baking tastes great and has a very rustic home baked look to it.  French baking on the other hand is much more refined in its appearance, and I often find the flavours are a little more subdued.

As you can see Blé really does pull off the "French" look very well.  Each dessert is a treat to the eyes as much as a treat to the mouth.  Each fold of chocolate, clump of berries, and squirt of icing is perfectly placed.  It almost makes you want to preserve your dessert for posterity instead of eating it.

Blé also had the best looking profiteroles I've ever seen in my entire life.

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Treats From Thessaloniki - Cookie Man

Last week I got back from a fun adventure to the city of Thessaloniki.  It's the second largest city in Greece, many consider it to be the cultural hub of Greece, but I would also consider it the baking capital of Greece.  It's not hard to argue that this city has some of the best food in the whole country, yet it's very surprising that more tourists don't come and visit. All this week I've decided that I'm going to highlight some of the food adventures I had on my epic adventure.  Most of the treats featured will be sweet, but not all of them.  What I can guarantee is by the time you read all of these adventures, you might consider a stop in Thessaloniki on your Greek vacation.

If you ever decide to open up a store selling sweet baked goods, you could really learn a lesson from the Cookie Man.  The Cookie Man is a bake shop in Thessaloniki that sells... you guessed it, cookies.  In a town full of spectacular bakeries, the Cookie Man has one edge over the competition, the smell.  From now on this place will set the bench mark for greatness when it comes to the smell of bakeries, both in quality and intensity.  While walking around the streets of Thessaloniki one day, Allison and I caught a whiff of cookie.  The smell became more and more intense, and after walking for more than a block we came to its source, the Cookie Man.

As soon as we got to the store we knew it was the place.  Not only because the smell in front of this store was more intense than any cookie smell I've ever experienced, but also because in the window they have their cookie baker going at full tilt.  This is the second great plan that the Cookie man has, they show exactly what is making this awesome smell right up front.  We had no choice but to go inside and buy a cookie or two.

The store was full of cookies, but before buying any, I asked if two of my cookies could be straight from the machine.  The lady told me "of course" and we then started selecting our cookies.  While the cookies straight from the machine lived up to the smell, I have to be honest and tell you that the other cookies weren't really that spectacular.  It's not that they were bad, they just didn't live up to the smell of the fresh cookies.  I guess what I'm suggesting is, if you visit the Cookie Man of Thessaloniki, make sure to get fresh cookies, and eat them up quick.

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Treats From Thessaloniki - Trigonas Pastry

Last week I got back from a fun adventure to the city of Thessaloniki.  It's the second largest city in Greece, many consider it to be the cultural hub of Greece, but I would also consider it the baking capital of Greece.  It's not hard to argue that this city has some of the best food in the whole country, yet it's very surprising that more tourists don't come and visit. All this week I've decided that I'm going to highlight some of the food adventures I had on my epic adventure.  Most of the treats featured will be sweet, but not all of them.  What I can guarantee is by the time you read all of these adventures, you might consider a stop in Thessaloniki on your Greek vacation.

Since Thessaloniki is most well know for its baked goods, I thought I would highlight its most famous baked sweet treat, the Trigona.  The treat itself is very simple, yet it's unique to the area.  It's a square of filo pastry folded in half (like a triangle) and filled with various creams.  The most common seem to be chocolate cream and a plain sweet cream, but I've seen others as well.  As you can tell from the photos the cream is not put on very lightly.

I can also tell you that the cream itself is not very light either.  It's a very thick, high fat cream, which makes it all the tastier.  It's funny because often you find treats from all of the other regions of Greece, in Athens as well, but I can't say I've seen Trigona around Athens too often, if ever.  If you happen to find yourself in Thessaloniki, and you want the most famous Trigona, make sure to check out Terkenlis, just off the main square.

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Treats From Thessaloniki - Market Sweets

Last week I got back from a fun adventure to the city of Thessaloniki.  It's the second largest city in Greece, many consider it to be the cultural hub of Greece, but I would also consider it the baking capital of Greece.  It's not hard to argue that this city has some of the best food in the whole country, yet it's very surprising that more tourists don't come and visit. All this week I've decided that I'm going to highlight some of the food adventures I had on my epic adventure.  Most of the treats featured will be sweet, but not all of them.  What I can guarantee is by the time you read all of these adventures, you might consider a stop in Thessaloniki on your Greek vacation.

Most Greek markets that I've visited turn out to either be really small or so large that they're very intimidating. Most of the large markets tend to be so full of people, and general chaos, that I don't really have the ability to see anything for sale and I'm swept up in just trying to work my way through them.  The market in Thessaloniki is different, it's large enough to give you a great adventure, but not so crowded that you just want to leave.  There's plenty of room to look around at all of the stalls.

And many of the stalls were full of sweet treats.  Some had standard packaged goods, others had bulk treats, and most of them had traditional Greek sweets.  The variety of halva available was pretty good, and it all looked hand made.

There were also other Greek delights available that I had never seen before.  Since I'm working on a future project all about Greek treats, I probably should start learning about them too.  I've never felt so comfortable in a Greek market than I did at the Thessaloniki market.  I never felt rushed, I saw some spectacular looking sweets, and all of the people were very friendly.

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The White Tower of Thessaloniki

Right in the heart of Thessaloniki near the water you'll find the White Tower.  I'm not really sure what it was used for throughout history, but presently it houses the Thessaloniki museum.

On the top floor of the museum they have a re-creation of a Thessaloniki taverna with tables set up all around.  On each of these tables is a video of someone making a classic Thessaloniki food, including this dessert table.  I sat here watching someone make desserts for the longest time.  Then I went down from the tower, walked into a bakery and ate some of those Thessaloniki desserts.

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Sweets From Thessaloniki

I recently had the joy of taking a long weekend trip to the city of Thessaloniki.  It's a great place to visit and I would recommend it to anybody.  I would also recommend checking out some of the local bakeries and restaurants.  In particular I recommend checking out the Terkenlis bakery.

And if you happen to go there, I strongly urge that you try out the "trigona".  These are triangular filo pastries filled with flavoured creams.  The three I sampled where caramel, chocolate and cream.  The chocolate and the cream pretty much tied for first, but the caramel was pretty good too.

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