With her Greek roots running deep and a heart full of wanderlust, Meni Valle has become one of Australia’s most active voices in Greek Mediterranean cuisine (and the proof is in the portokalopita with Valle recently launching the Greek Food and Wine Society). She’s the author of seven cookbooks – each as thoughtful, heartfelt, and full of delicious recipes as the last – and her most recent release, Thessaloniki, which explores the warmth and depth of the city’s cuisine, is a prime example of everything you’ve come to expect from the celebrated writer.
Here’s Valle now with how Thessaloniki came together – and the importance of paper-thin filo in Greek cooking.
I wrote Thessaloniki because this city lived in our kitchen long before I ever walked its streets. My mother spent most of her childhood there, and though she rarely spoke of those years, her hands remembered everything – the way she’d stretch filo until it was translucent, the particular spices she’d reach for without thinking, the rhythm of her cooking that carried the soul of a place I’d never seen. I knew how important it was to preserve these family recipes, to capture not just the techniques but the stories they held before they slipped away with time.
The book came together the way the best stories do – over coffee-stained conversations and hurried notes scribbled on napkins. I’d sit with my cousins over morning bougatsa, and they’d casually mention how their mother (my aunty) prepared something special, and I’d frantically write it down in the notebook that I always carried in my bag. I became that slightly persistent cousin, always asking questions, always listening. In the markets, I’d strike up conversations with vendors and shoppers, asking simple things like “What are you cooking today?” People were incredibly generous with their stories – I remember one elegant elderly woman patiently explaining her mother’s technique while I fumbled with my phone to record her as I knew that I couldn’t write it all down fast enough to capture all she was saying.
Each evening, I’d return to my cousin’s kitchen table with these treasures, trying to piece together what I’d learned while the warmth of those conversations was still fresh.
I’d love the non-Greek world to understand more about the different regions of Greece. Each place whispers its own beautiful story through food, and when we simply say “Greek food” we’re missing so many treasures waiting to be discovered. Thessaloniki’s cuisine carries the warmth of Ottoman spices, the depth of Jewish culinary traditions, the heartiness of Balkan influences – flavours you won’t find on the islands or in other regions. Food is how we share our most intimate stories, and Greece has countless different stories, each one shaped by its own landscape and history. I hope people will venture beyond the familiar and fall in love with these regional gems the way I have. There’s a whole world of flavours just waiting to embrace them.
If you want to see this for yourself in Melbourne, why not try Muses Wine Bar for their soutzoukakia, pickles, and spanakopita – close your eyes and dream of being in an ouzeri in Thessaloniki. At Taverna in East Brunswick, you can’t go past the char-grilled, melt-in-your-mouth octopus and piperies. Kafeneion does an exquisite pork and celery avgolemono and pickles, while Salona‘s papoutsakia, char-grilled lamb cutlets, and my favourite, prawn yiouvetsi, are all wonderful. I always love checking out the specials at Greek restaurants – you never know what beautiful regional dishes you might discover that way. And there are so many more places on my list to explore – Melbourne’s Greek food scene keeps surprising me.
The main thing I learned writing it was that writing about Thessaloniki’s food became a way of getting to know my mother differently, but it also taught me so much about writing itself – how stories find their way onto the page through the smallest details, how memory lives in the rhythm of a sentence.
Each recipe I found felt like uncovering a small story she’d never thought to tell – the way her mother kneaded bread, why she always hummed that certain song while cooking certain dishes, or how her family’s table looked on Sunday afternoons. As I learned about the city’s markets and neighbourhoods, I started to picture her as a young woman walking those same streets, shopping for ingredients, learning from the women around her.
The recipes weren’t just instructions; they were pieces of her life before me. Through simple things like her method for making soup, the spices she reached for without thinking, and especially her amazing filo – stretched paper-thin with such practised grace that it seemed like magic – I began to understand something about where she came from. Her language revealed Thessaloniki to me too – I was surprised to discover that some of the words she’d always used weren’t Greek at all. Little Turkish expressions like ‘tamam’ (okay, alright) or ‘mashallah’ (expressing admiration), along with Macedonian words she’d throw in naturally, had all become such a seamless part of how people spoke in the city that I’d never thought to wonder where they came from.
The cookbook became more than I’d planned: a way of meeting the young woman my mother had been, understanding how Thessaloniki had lived on in her kitchen all these years.
If you take one thing from this book, I would love for you to take away the understanding that recipes are never just about the food – they’re windows into the people and places that created them. Every family’s cooking is a form of storytelling, whether you’re making your grandmother’s bread or trying a dish from Thessaloniki for the first time. Learn to cook with curiosity about where a dish comes from, who made it before you, and what stories it carries within its flavours. Let yourself appreciate how much a single city’s food can teach you – not just about techniques and ingredients, but about the beautiful layers of culture, migration, and tradition that live in every meal. When you cook with that awareness, understanding that the why behind every ingredient is just as important as the how, every dish becomes a way of connecting with history, place and memory. That’s when cooking becomes more than following instructions – it becomes a conversation across time.
And if you’re going to start anywhere, start with bougatsa – Thessaloniki’s beloved breakfast pastry. If you’re confident with handmade filo, use it, but here I have used store-bought filo which works beautifully too. It’s a great place to begin.
But I’d also love it if you tried making homemade filo using a rolling pin – there’s something really special about the process, the way the dough slowly transforms under your hands, and the quiet satisfaction of creating those delicate sheets yourself. Don’t worry if it doesn’t work perfectly the first time; even experienced cooks will tell you filo takes practice and patience. There’s something wonderful about the learning process itself – feeling how the dough responds, understanding why it was such an important skill to master. When you eventually roll out that first sheet, you’ll understand a little of what my mother and countless others felt when they perfected this gentle art. Every attempt teaches you something, and that’s part of the beauty of it. Then you can create your own pies – spanakopita, tyropita, or whatever filling calls to you – knowing that every layer was made by your own hands.
If you’re a relatively new cook, give roasted red peppers and amygdalota a go for that essential Thessaloniki flavour. These dishes – something savoury and something sweet – are wonderful introductions to the region’s distinctive tastes. The roasted peppers capture that smoky sweetness that’s so characteristic of northern Greek cooking, while amygdalota offers a beautiful way to experience traditional sweets. Both are deeply satisfying to make and will give you a real sense of the flavours that make this cuisine so special.
If you’re looking to extend yourself a bit more, meanwhile, try the traditional tyropita with hand-stretched filo – a cheese pie that’s such a joy to make once you get the feel for it. There’s something wonderful about stretching the dough by hand until it’s almost see-through, then layering it with that cheese filling. And if you’re feeling adventurous, the manti is truly special – these delicate little dumplings with deep roots in Ottoman culinary traditions. They take time and care, but are worth the effort.
And these are only a few. I have so many favourites, like kotopoulo me safran, damaskina kai paprika (chicken with saffron, prunes and paprika). Northern Greece grows some of the world’s finest saffron in the town of Kozani. If you’re more of a sweet tooth, please try the iconic trigona paramatos and politiko Thessalonikis – these are the desserts that truly capture Thessaloniki’s reputation as a city of sweets. The trigona will teach you to work with delicate filo triangles and master the art of syrup-soaking, while politiko introduces you to different traditional techniques altogether. Both will give you a real taste of why this city is so celebrated for its sweets, and you’ll develop skills in sweet filo work that open up a whole world of Greek dessert-making. There’s so much more I could share with you, but discovering the rest will be part of your own delicious journey.
The next Greek region on my radar? That would be… While I’d love to explore another Greek region eventually, and I will, I’m honestly not ready to move on from Thessaloniki just yet. I’ve become completely obsessed with the city’s sweets and pastries – there’s still so much to discover about the bougatsa makers, the traditional confectioneries, and all those incredible syrup-soaked desserts that make northern Greece so special. I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of Thessaloniki’s sweet traditions, so for now, I’m happily lost in that world.
When you’ve finished reading Thessaloniki I hope you’ll have a deeper appreciation for the fact that Greek food is really a collection of beautiful regional stories, each one different and special. I hope you’ll understand that what someone learns growing up in Thessaloniki is quite different from what they might have experienced in other regions or the islands. There’s something wonderful about discovering that Greek cuisine isn’t just one thing – it’s the cooking of fishermen and farmers, of city markets and island gardens, of families who’ve been shaped by different landscapes and histories. I hope this book helps you see that behind every regional dish is a place and its people, and that exploring these differences isn’t just about food – it’s about understanding how beautifully varied and rich Greece really is. Maybe it will even inspire you to seek out these regional flavours for yourself, or simply to appreciate the stories that every family’s cooking carries within it.
Thessaloniki by Meni Valle (Hardie Grant, RRP $50.00) is out now and yours to purchase from the likes of such Victorian booksellers as Readings, Books for Cooks and Hill of Content.