ABSTRACT
Are Greek artisanal foods only about distinction and reinforcing class hierarchies? This chapter goes deeper into deli spaces and presents an ethnographic portrait of Hara deli, seeing cuisine as embedded in sociability and commensality. In this chapter I enter Hara’s back kitchen and spend my time cooking, talking, drinking and singing with the owners and customers. I sketch the mechanisms of commensality and analyse it as a process. I then engage with the political aspects of commensality, its association with the senses and its visceral role in the exoneration of the rural. By observing the social workings and practices of commensality in this highly sensorial environment, this chapter discusses how Athenians create a rich food culture and meaningful social worlds and suggests how sociability and practices of food sharing become politicised and act as one potential remedy for the crisis.
