The icing on the cake

On Friday 3rd Feb 2012 while I was having my daily zap of radiotherapy in Thessaloniki, Spouseman was travelling up the country from our island home to join me. He arrived at around lunchtime and we went to a taverna close to the back-packers hostel where I was staying. The taverna is called INGLISH because it was once extremely popular with English servicemen, possibly during the First World War though maybe some other conflict. Correctly in Greek it should be called Anglikos and I suspect it is called INGLISH because of our countrymen's refusal to even attempt to speak the language of the country in which they find themselves. You can almost hear them marching about asking 'Where can I find the English?' It's décor is positively Turkish because prior to the 1923 population exchange, when all muslims were deported from Greece and swapped for all the Christians in Turkey, this had been the Turkish quarter of the city.

In 2012 the taverna was run as a co-operative with different chefs and different waiting staff working at different times on different days. It was a funky bohemian place with no a la carte menu, just a chalk board written by the chef on his arrival when he had decided what he wanted to cook that day.

The hospital had provided me with a fearsome diet sheet which was unbelievably limiting;
No alcohol
4 - 5 litres water per day
No beans
No tomatoes nor any vegetables with seeds
No fruit, nor dried fruit nor nuts nor sesame
No olives nor pickles
-
Yes apples and bananas
Yes tinned fruit
Yes fruit juice but not the type with bits in
Yes when boiled; mushrooms, carrots, asparagus, spinach, leeks, beetroot, squash, lettuce, peas, potatoes
-
Yes to all milk products
Yes to meat, poultry, eggs, fish, cheese, rice, pasta, potatoes
But not when fried, smoked, in sauce or highly spiced.
-
Yes to all types of bread but not wholegrain, bran or sesame.
-
No to jams and other sweets which contain fruit, dried fruit or nuts
Yes to all remaining sweets (honey, chocolate, jelly ice cream etc.)

We decided that the wisest course of action was simply to hand the diet sheet to the waitress who in turn passed it to the chef du jour.
After a little kitchen debate the waitress returned with a suggestion of grilled pork fillet with oven roast potatoes and vlita, which sounded wonderful and I agreed. Spouseman probably had something different and certainly had a small jug of wine.

There were not many customers that afternoon and so once all patrons had been served the chef, who's name was Theofilos, came out of the kitchen to chat with us. He was interested to hear that we had a smallholding on Skopelos including a small vineyard and that Spousie made his own wine. He disappeared for a short while and returned with a bottle of wine. 'I made this' he said 'Take it home to Skopelos and one day in the summer sit down and drink it and remember me'. We were so touched. Later, when we asked for the bill he just said 'No, it's on me'

Unbeknownst to Theofilos he had just magically transformed my worst ever birthday into my best.