Mediterranean diet travel food guide: What to eat in Greece, Italy, Spain, France, Portugal and Turkey

The Age

21-05-2025

Going on a diet is the last thing any sane person would think about while swanning around the Mediterranean. But if you're having yoghurt for breakfast, pasta al pomodoro for lunch, and grilled fish and a glass of wine for dinner, you're already on one of the oldest diets in the world. The Mediterranean one.
When in Greece, order the Greek salad. Credit: iStock
In a nutshell (because nuts are a part of it as well), the Mediterranean diet is based on loads of vegetables and olive oil, some fish, whole grains, fruits, smaller amounts of dairy products and meat, and moderate amounts of alcohol. Multiple studies have shown that eating in this way can lower your risk of heart disease and add years to your life.
Each of the countries that fringe the Mediterranean Sea has developed its own flavour profiles and eating traditions, drawn from their markedly different landscapes, languages and customs, but they all cleave to the same general – and very delicious – principles.
So here's a guide to what to eat and where; based purely on, let's be honest, my personal greed.
When in Greece, for instance, order horiatiki, aka Greek salad, for its vibrant mix of tomatoes, red onion, black olives and salty feta cheese. Look for briam, a wonderfully fruity mess of vegetables roasted down in olive oil, and spanakopita, or spinach pie, for a big fix of leafy greens.
Greek recipes are ancient and their methods are simple, but the resulting flavours are deeply savoury, textural and comforting. Sit down at a wooden table in the underground cellar of Diporto, Athens' oldest underground taverna, for instance, and have revithia, a thick, almost creamy soup of chickpeas with olive oil. Mitsos, owner and chef, will bring you a jug of cloudy retsina – although you'll be keeping the drinking moderate, of course, in keeping with the tenets of the diet.
Freshly grilled sardines in Portugal. Credit: Alamy
In Turkey, you should go nuts for nuts. Head for the bustling Karakoy Market in Istanbul for the rich, honey-drenched baklava at Karakoy Gulluoglu, a bakery that opened in 1949 and has turned the layering of filo pastry and chopped nuts into an art form.
Portugal may face the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Mediterranean, but the Portuguese have the same dependence on natural, local and seasonal foods, particularly fish. Lunch on oily-fleshed sardinhas grelhadas (grilled sardines) wreathed in billowing smoke at an outdoor grill in the Alfama district of Lisbon, with its maze of tiny narrow alleys and pateos (terraces), for one of the most atmospheric eating experiences in Europe.