Has one of the oldest and most tasty gastronomic traditions in the world. The history of the Cretan Diet and Cretan Cuisine is lost in the mists of time. It is a sequence of a tradition that has come down to us from the Minoan era.
The Cretan Cuisine would gather all the knowledge and the experience that were passed on from generation to generation. In the meantime, through the literary works of Athenaeus, Homer, Hippocrates and many other ancient Greek writers, we have learnt about various ways of preparing healthy gourmet dishes. While the urban families would prefer elaborate, foreign-born dishes, the rural people would still rely on nature for their survival: wild herbs, seeds, pulses, olives and olive oil. All of these enriched with the power of their wild imagination. They could cook these products in numerous ways to make them tasty and rich in flavor.
To survive under extremely adverse conditions, when the island was occupied by the Arabs (824-961), the Venetians (1204-1669) and the Ottomans (1669-1898). The conquerors kept changing but nothing could change the soul, the religion, the language and… the cuisine of the Cretans! This is our heritage, a legacy that today proves to be invaluable, since the international scientific community talks about, not only the Cretan Cuisine, but also about the “miracle of the Cretan Diet”, the most typical example of the Mediterranean diet, the best and most complete healthy diet in the world!