ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I move into the restaurant world and focus on the process of creation of Greek high cuisine, reflecting the ways global ingredients, techniques and trends interact with local values. In this chapter, I follow prominent Greek chefs and talk to food journalists, restaurant owners and suppliers. I also look at fine-dining restaurant menus and cookery books. I sketch the preservation and revalorising of the cultural values of rurality, introducing an additional dimension, that of ‘culinary values’ and explore its links to the reconnection of foodways. I investigate the process of reinvention of traditional dishes and rural foods, the deconstructing and reconstructing of flavours using molecular gastronomy techniques, and the negotiation of boundaries when foreign ingredients are introduced. I analyse how Greek chefs negotiate between the global and the local in processes of preserving, deconstructing and reconstructing of cuisine. I end this chapter analysing the contradictions that ultimately have to do with the disembedding of foods, with class tensions and the challenges in renegotiating belonging and creating a unified Greek cuisine and identity.
