Hands off the Smyrneika koulourakia!

Greek coffee ready.

A plate of homemade Smyrneika beside me.

Greek brain successfully rebooted.

NOT!

Nothing has been changed.

Nobody has been combined.

Every name, every cookie, every protest, and every devastating bakery announcement is completely true.

Karen has a favorite bakery in Kalamata.

Obviously.

You cannot live in Greece without developing a fiercely loyal relationship with at least one bakery. It would be like living here without having a favorite kafeneio, a preferred souvlaki place, and one pharmacist who knows more about your medical history than your doctor.

Karen’s bakery belongs to Kaliopi, a neighborhood gem whose display cases are filled with the kind of things that make restraint seem unnecessary and possibly un-Greek.

I love Kaliopi’s bakery too.

Especially the cheese breadsticks.

Buttery. Salty. Dangerous.

I cannot stay away from them.

Her koulourakia?

Very good.

No Smyrneika.

The other gazillion versions of koulourakia. Nahhh.

I tried them all. I wanted to love them. I tried to convince myself that perhaps the next one would awaken something deep inside me.

Nothing.

Then one day, Eirini brought us a box of pastries from another bakery.

Eirini is, of course, a Vroni. There are enough Vronis in our immediate neighborhood to form a small government, and most of them are related to our landlady.

Inside the box were several innocent-looking, flower-shaped pastries filled with some kind of apple mixture.

Deadly.

Not deadly in the unpleasant sense.

Deadly in the Greek-bakery sense, meaning you eat one, announce that you absolutely cannot eat another, and then discover an empty box beside you.

“We had to eat them,” Eirini explained.

Doctor’s orders.

The doctor was her husband, Nikos, of course, who is a radiologist.

I am not entirely certain radiologists are authorized to prescribe apple pastries, but this is Greece. Medical specialties are flexible when filo dough is involved.

The pastries came from a bakery in the center of Kalamata called Alevromata.

Naturally, we went to investigate.

There were more of the apple things.

There were diples.

There were more cheese breadsticks.

There were rows and rows of koulourakia.

And then I saw them.

Σμυρναίικα κουλουράκια.

Smyrneika.

The little boat-shaped cookies traditionally associated with Smyrna.

I bought a few.

I took one bite.

And there she was.

My yiayia.

The taste. The aroma. The texture.

My grandmother was from Smyrni, and these koulourakia somehow carried me directly back to her kitchen. One bite, and decades disappeared.

I was no longer standing in a bakery in Kalamata.

I was a child again.

This is what food does to Greeks. It is never simply food. It is memory, family, geography, history, and emotional instability served on a small plate.

From that day forward, I always found a reason to pass through the center of town.

“We need something from the pharmacy.”

“I should check the Plateia.”

“I think we need to get some walking in. My Apple Watch has already reprimanded me twice this morning.”

“I sense a possible shortage of Smyrneika.”

And somehow, every innocent errand ended with another little box from Alevromata.

Then came the disaster.

I walked into the bakery one day and asked for my usual Smyrneika.

Dionysia, my good friend and the wife of the owner, looked at me.

Not a normal look.

A solemn look.

The kind of look people use when they have terrible news but are searching for a gentle way to deliver it.

“Nikos isn’t going to make them anymore.”

I stared at her.

“What?”

“They are too much work. He decided to stop.”

Nikos.

Of course his name was Nikos.

A man named Nikos had personally destroyed my connection to Smyrna.

Apparently, shaping the dough into all those little boats required too much time. There would be no more batches. No more little boxes. No more excuses to walk through the center of Kalamata.

The Smyrneika had been discontinued.

I walked out of the bakery completely disoriented.

Karen was waiting in the car.

I opened the door and sat down.

“What happened?” she asked.

I mumbled something.

“What happened?”

I stared straight ahead.

“Nick, what happened?”

I must have looked as though I had seen a ghost. Or received devastating medical news. Or discovered that Greece had outlawed feta.

“They will stop making the Smyrneika. They did not have any”

Karen paused.

I could tell she was trying very hard to determine the appropriate level of sympathy.

“They what?”

“Nikos says they are too much work.”

“Oh.”

Oh?

Oh?

A vital part of my cultural heritage had just been erased from a Kalamata bakery, and my own wife—my partner of more than twenty-five years—responded with oh.

Naturally, I protested.

I gathered support.

I marched down the main Plateia of Kalamata.

At least that is how the demonstration appeared in my head.

There were banners.

There were speeches.

There may have been international observers.

ΚΑΤΩ ΤΑ ΧΕΡΙΑ ΑΠΟ ΤΑ ΣΜΥΡΝΑΪΚΑ ΚΟΥΛΟΥΡΑΚΙΑ!

Hands off the Smyrneika koulourakia!

In reality, I used a megaphone and made fun of myself outside Alevromata and then outside Karen’s bakery.

This is what happens when a retired man has too much time, access to social media, and strong feelings about baked goods.

A few days later, I ran into Vasiliki, another friend who works at Alevromata.

I asked her to confirm the rumors.

She lowered her voice.

It was true.

The Smyrneika were finished.

Three days later, I returned to the bakery.

There it was.

The tray.

My tray.

Empty.

Completely empty.

Dionysia stood behind the counter, slowly shaking her head.

No words were exchanged.

None were necessary.

We both crossed ourselves in honor of the departed Smyrneika.

Αιωνία τους η μνήμη.

May their memory be eternal.

But what does a Greek do when deprived of his favorite dessert?

Does he accept the situation calmly?

Does he move on?

Does he choose another koulouraki from the forty-seven available varieties?

Absolutely not.

He becomes determined.

Fine, I thought.

I will make them myself.

I found a recipe. I assembled the ingredients. I entered the kitchen with the confidence of a man who has watched other people bake throughout his entire life.

Among the ingredients as an after thought besides vanilla one recipe mentioned real mastiha.

Not mastiha flavoring.

Not powder.

The actual little pieces of mastiha. Ahhhh I could already smell my yiayia kitchen.

I used them incorrectly.

I will not go into the details because future culinary historians may be studying this event, and I do not wish to influence their findings.

The important thing is that my Smyrneika did not come out exactly like the ones from Alevromata.

They tasted different.

They smelled different.

They were not exactly the koulourakia of my yiayia.

I had failed.

Then Karen tried one.

Her eyes widened.

“These are my favorite koulourakia.”

My disaster had become a breakthrough.

By misusing the mastiha, I had accidentally created a new variety specifically engineered for Karen.

I had begun the day trying to resurrect my grandmother’s Smyrneika and ended it inventing my wife’s favorite cookie.

This is Greece.

Even pastry grief comes with a plot twist.

Perhaps I should give up writing silly stories and become a baker.

I already have the name:

“Εδώ τα Καλά Σμυρναίικα!”

“Edo Ta Kala Smyrneika!”

Here are the good Smyrneika!

One retired writer.

One devastated customer.

One misused piece of mastiha.

And, judging from the old banknote beneath the plate, our first day’s earnings are already on the table.

Siga, siga 💙

Nick in Kalamata