The Chef’s Palate: Greece with Chef Evan Mallett
An Eco-Culinary Retreat in Greece
October 2027
The morning air in the Laconian hills carries wild thyme and the faint sweetness of ripening figs. Below, the medieval towers of Monemvasia rise from the sea like something dreamed rather than built. You have spent the morning at the edge of an olive grove with a fourth-generation family who has worked this land since before your grandparents were born, pressing oil the same way, answering the same questions from the same trees. This afternoon, Evan will lead you into the hillside and name what is edible and what is not, and why a cook would care about the difference. Tonight, the group will plan a meal together from everything you have touched this week. Chef Evan Mallett has been asking these questions for thirty years. In Greece's southern Peloponnese, for eight days, so will you.
What ends up on the plate begins somewhere in the land and sea. This program finds that somewhere.
The Chef's Palate is a program for people who want to understand where food actually comes from and what a chef does with that knowledge. Over eight days, a small group works and learns alongside Chef Evan Mallett as he moves through markets, farms, and open landscapes, asking the questions he has always asked: who grew this, what did it take, and what does it want to become? The program ends with a meal the group plans and prepares together.
Eight days. Up to Twelve participants.
Who This Is For
This program is for people who have always wanted to understand how a chef thinks. Not the technique, exactly, but the thinking that happens before anyone touches a knife: why this ingredient, from this place, at this moment in the season. Over seven days you will follow that thinking from market to grove to hillside to table, and you will leave with something you can use, a way of seeing food that goes home with you and shows up in your own kitchen.
It is also, frankly, for anyone who wants to experience Greece the way most visitors never do. The Greeks have a word for what you will encounter at every turn: philoxenia. Literally, friend to the stranger. It is not a hospitality industry term. It is a cultural reflex, thousands of years old, that means you will be fed before you are hungry, welcomed before you ask, and sent home with more than you arrived with.
Athens: Where It Begins
The program opens in Athens with the group gathering the first evening for a welcome drink and dinner at a neighborhood taverna that has no interest in being discovered. The food is honest, the room is full of locals, and the pace is unhurried. It is a good first night before the week properly begins.
The next morning starts at Varvakios, the central meat and fish market on Athinas Street. When Evan arrives in a city, he finds the market, and this is the one. Professional buyers arrive before dawn, and the stalls run loud and unconcerned with visitors. He will move through it the way he moves through any market, asking what is worth cooking, who caught it, and what the season is telling him. You will be right beside him while he does.
That evening, the group dines at a newer bistro, Rhoe, in Plaka, where traditional Greek products meet a more contemporary hand. The next morning, we set off for the Peloponnese.
The Peloponnese: Where the Work Happens
From Athens the group travels south into Laconia, one of the least-visited and most food-serious regions in Greece. The olive harvest is underway in October, and the Laconian landscape in autumn is exactly what this program is built around: family groves, small producers, ingredients that have been grown and pressed and fermented the same way for generations.
The days that follow are spent in the field and in the kitchen. The group begins in the woods with a local mushroom and truffle hunter, then moves on to a series of producer visits, where the people who grow, press, and make the food of this region show you how it is done. Two hands-on culinary experiences bring what you have seen back to the table. Evan is in the middle of all of it, asking what is worth cooking, who made it, and what it wants to become.
Along the way, the group eats with some of the region’s most talented chefs in local tavernas, the kind of meals that explain a place better than any itinerary could.
Afternoons are yours. Optional add-ons include a guided historical tour of Monemvasia’s medieval kastro, one of the best-preserved fortified towns in the Mediterranean, and a boat excursion along the coast to see the area from the sea and swim in October water that is still warm. Evenings are unhurried, and on the last night the group prepares a meal together.
The Culminating Meal
On the last evening, the group gathers to cook together. The menu comes from everything encountered during the week: what was foraged, what was pressed, what came from the winery and the grove and the sea. Evan will lead in the kitchen. Everyone participates.
Reasons to Travel with Evan Mallett
He Came Up Through Curiosity, Not Credentials
Before he had a restaurant, Evan was a food writer. No culinary school. No formal training. What he has instead is three decades of asking the questions most chefs skip: who grew this, under what conditions, and why does it matter.
His Cooking Begins Before the Kitchen
At Black Trumpet, local sourcing was not a marketing decision. Evan was doing it before the term farm-to-table existed, because it made no sense to him that an ingredient should travel across the world before it reached a plate. In Laconia, that same instinct meets a landscape where sourcing locally was never a philosophy. It was just how things worked. The olive grove families, the winemakers, the wild foods Rachel pulls from the hillsides, these are the conversations Evan has been having his whole career. Now you will be in the room.
He Wants It to Be Contagious
Evan once said of Black Trumpet: "I love food so much that I want my experience and education in food to be contagious." The first critic to review the restaurant wrote that she didn't understand most of what was on the menu, and that everything she had was fantastic.
About Chef Evan Mallett
Evan Mallett is the owner and executive chef of Black Trumpet in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a six-time James Beard Award nominee, and the author of Black Trumpet: A Chef's Journey Through Eight New England Seasons, published by Chelsea Green. He co-founded Cultivate New Hampshire, an umbrella nonprofit for local food and culture, and launched the culinary arts program at Great Bay Community College in 2024. What drives all of it is what he once described as a "super geeky anthropological curiosity" about food: where it comes from, who grew it, what it took, and what it wants to become. That curiosity built Black Trumpet's sourcing relationships over twenty years. In Greece, it is what he will bring to the market, the grove, and the table.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does the trip start?
The program will begin in Athens. Participants arrange their own international flights. Detailed arrival and departure guidance is provided to all registered guests.
Is travel insurance required?
Yes. Travel insurance is required for all participants. We recommend purchasing a policy that covers trip cancellation, interruption, and emergency medical within two weeks of your deposit to ensure the broadest coverage.
What is the physical level required?
The program involves walking on uneven terrain, hillsides, and cobblestone streets, particularly in Monemvasia. Participants should be comfortable with moderate walking on hills and some distance. This is not a strenuous program, but it is an active one.
How much free time is there?
Mornings are generally structured around field visits and culinary experiences. Afternoons are largely free, with optional add-on excursions available. Evenings involve group dinners. There is time built in to rest and explore on your own.
What if I have dietary restrictions?
Please note any dietary restrictions at registration. We will do our best to accommodate within the context of a program built around what is seasonal and local in southern Greece in October.
Can I extend my trip before or after the retreat?
Absolutely, Meraki Travel Experiences can build a custom itinerary around your interests, whether that means more time in Athens, island hopping, or exploring other parts of the Peloponnese. Reach out to us at info@merakiexperiences.com to start planning.