Zorba's Taverna: The Trouble With Goats and Mayors, page 20
But somewhere between the grilled octopus and the goat wearing protest sashes, we’d become a message.
About slowness.
About soul.
About… olives, probably.
They came like pilgrims, not the sandal-and-incense kind, but the kind armed with linen shirts, and notebooks full of questions nobody asked them to answer.
They didn’t want food. They wanted meaning.
One man from Copenhagen asked to “immerse himself in the tension between comfort and defiance”.
Alex handed him a broken chair and said, “Sit carefully.”
A Parisian woman cried into the lentils and declared it “a metaphor for post-war survival”.
Mary rolled her eyes and refilled her wine.
A Berlin visitor asked if we offered workshops.
“Workshops?” Alex blinked. “We barely offer chairs.”
He booked anyway.
Someone filmed reels. Someone wrote a paper. A man from Barcelona described the grilled octopus as “like tasting identity fragmentation in a post-authenticity era”.
Mary served him the head and walked away.
Someone asked if Katerina was “symbolic”.
“She’s symbolic of goat,” I said. “Chews, headbutts, may or may not bless your dinner. That sort of thing.”
Then the madness spread. Someone gave Katerina a Twitter account.
Posts appeared like:
“Chew the rope. Bite the fence. Reject the bowl.”
Within a week she had more followers than the mayor.
Claude, naturally, leaned into the whole thing. He designed a poster with the slogan, “WELCOME TO ZORBA’S – Where Nothing Is Curated and Everything Is True.”
Alex confiscated it. Then she framed it and hung it in the loo, next to the leak.
Soon, no one asked what was on the menu, they asked what wasn’t.
They didn’t want tzatziki; they wanted the absence of tzatziki.
They didn’t want service; they wanted stare-downs.
They didn’t want Instagram; they wanted to feel judged.
And we… did what we always did.
We served what we had, when it was ready, without garnish.
Sometimes still moving.
No apologies.
No hashtags.
No theories.
But the theories came anyway.
It became clear we weren’t just feeding tourists any more. We were feeding a crisis of modernity, one plate at a time.
And somehow, this messy, smoky, mismatched taverna – with its yelling, its wrong orders, its fearsome goat, and a specials board that simply read “FOOD” – had become a sort of sanctuary. A final refuge for people who didn’t want things explained.
They came because they’d been offered too many options elsewhere. Because they were tired of curated experiences. Because they were hungry for something real. They came for silence. They came for salt. They came for Spiros saying “No” like a benediction. They came to be rejected – and they loved it.
And Zorba?
He didn’t react. He sat, smoked, watched them arrive with their canvas bags and complicated shoes. Watched them lower themselves onto slightly wobbly chairs and pretend not to be terrified of Theodora’s soup. He didn’t speak. He didn’t move. He just stared. As if to say: You’re not supposed to understand this. You’re supposed to eat it. And then leave.
So we didn’t build a brand. We didn’t make merch. We didn’t lean in – we leaned back. Zorba’s had become – accidentally, gloriously – a resistance. Against pretension. Against polish. Against the idea that things need improvement.
And that, somehow, was enough.
And now?
Now, every time someone pulled out a notebook instead of ordering dessert, we knew: this wasn’t just a taverna any more. It was an idea. And there’s nothing more dangerous than that.
So if you’re reading this and thinking of visiting – please do.
Just don’t expect instructions.
And for the love of all things holy, don’t ask for almond milk.
Chapter Forty-Three
The Night the Taverna Forgot to Sit Down
It started, as these things always do in Telios, with someone shouting a wild idea. This time it was: “Let’s do a dance night!”
Just the declaration, shouted into the ether like an invocation. And as with most things here, no one questioned it. No one mentioned the fact that the last one ended with a twisted ankle, a ruined clarinet, and Dimitri unconscious with his feet in the sea and his head on a melon. Because in Telios, a shout is as good as a contract. A suggestion becomes a movement. A movement becomes a night no one will forget, even if they wake up wondering why there’s a goat in their lap and oregano in their shoe.
Claude, naturally, took creative control. He declared the theme to be “Mediterranean Moonlight”, which meant more lanterns, less logic, and a terrifying number of chiffon scarves. “The aesthetic must breathe,” he said, while draping a fishing net over a fig tree.
Maria launched into research mode, interviewing everyone who’d ever twisted an ankle or broken a promise on a dance floor. Within hours, she’d published a one-off edition of her gossip sheet titled: “Bouzouki and Broken Promises: A Retrospective”, featuring three false engagements and one confirmed elopement (to Albania, of all places).
Dimitri offered to “sort the drinks”, which should have set off more alarm bells than it did. This is, after all, the man who once brewed wine in a washing machine and swore it “tasted even better with fabric conditioner”.
The band arrived around four, in a battered van full of dented instruments. One man named Stelios introduced himself as a “percussionist of fate”. They unpacked three bouzoukis, a tambourine, a saucepan duct-taped to a mop handle, and a PA system held together by hope, twine, and the local church’s extension cord.
Alex, of course, took over. She always does.
“Chairs to the side! We need a dance floor!” she barked, waving her clipboard like a sceptre. “Mary, crowd control. Eleni, check the power won’t explode again. Dimitri, stop lighting things. Spiros–”
“I’ll sit here,” said Spiros firmly, not moving an inch.
“Perfect,” said Alex, without missing a beat.
By sunset, the taverna was glowing. Not romantically, but in the way things glow right before they catch fire. The tables had been rearranged into something vaguely amphitheatrical, the floor swept by volunteers and one particularly determined chicken, and the octopus line cleared to prevent strangulation incidents.
Bottles of Dimitri’s tsipouro sat ominously on every surface. Some had labels. Some had warnings. None had instructions.
The tourists looked delighted. The locals looked wary. And the air, thick with pine smoke, garlic, and barely contained potential, was electric.
And then… it began.
In Greece, dancing isn’t performance. It’s history in motion. It’s protest and joy and flirtation and communion, all wrapped into one wild swirl of arms and feet and declarations.
Most visitors to Greece believe that Zorba the Greek is the traditional national dance. It isn’t. Not in most villages. Not on most islands.
The famous “Zorba dance” is actually called Sirtaki, and although it’s arguably the best-known Greek dance internationally, it only dates back to the 1960s. Composer Mikis Theodorakis created it specifically for the film Zorba the Greek, blending slow and fast steps from three older dances: the Hasapiko, the Hasaposerviko, and the Syrtos. The result is a dance that starts slow, ends fast, and feels like it’s carrying you somewhere you didn’t quite expect.
It’s danced in a line or a circle, arms draped across your neighbours’ shoulders – a mix of camaraderie, choreography, and just enough chaos to make you feel alive.
Every region of Greece has its own folk dances, and no one knows them all. In most villages, the most commonly danced is the Syrtos itself – a family of gentle, gliding line dances that form a slow-moving semicircle. Each area has its own version, its own steps, its own tempo.
The best-known of these is the Kalamatianos – faster, brighter, more spirited, and often called Greece’s national dance. It’s what you’re most likely to see at weddings and festivals, where the lines grow longer, the feet tap faster, and someone eventually shouts opa! whether it’s needed or not.
They even teach traditional dancing in Greek schools. That’s where Alex caught the bug as a small girl. Somewhere between arithmetic and the alphabet, she fell in love with rhythm. Over the years, she honed her skill so finely that she could leap up and join any dance at any moment, as if her feet had simply been waiting for permission.
Greek dancing often combines tears and smiles, moving through a full range of emotions. Sirtaki, for instance, is all smiles, starting slow and building up into a wild crescendo until the whole group collapses in laughter and exhaustion. Other dances, though, are pure emotion, often expressing sorrow.
Tonight, the first dance was Alex’s alone. She chose the Zeibekiko.
Greece has always lived with invasion.
First came the Persians, sweeping across the Aegean with ships and fire. Then the Ottomans, who stayed for centuries, folding the country into their empire. And in living memory, the Germans and Italians during the Second World War, when villages were burned and people were starved into silence.
And then there was the loss that still haunts the people, the catastrophe of 1922, when millions of Greeks were forced from their homes in Anatolia. They came across the sea with what little they could carry: icons, recipes, stories, music. They brought with them grief and memory that has never quite left.
The Zeibekiko was born from that grief. There are no steps, no count, no pattern to follow. Only movement, improvised from the heart, as if the earth itself is pulling the dancer’s feet. It isn’t a performance. It’s a confession. A prayer made public. A plea for understanding.
Its roots lie in Asia Minor, among the displaced, the defeated, the ones who carried whole villages in their pockets. It is danced alone, not for applause, but for truth.
And for Alex, whose own family had known deportation, hunger, and despair, it was sacred.
When she dances the Zeibekiko, she does not dance for an audience. She dances for those who lost everything and still stood up again. She dances for the memory of homes that no longer exist, for the mothers who cooked with empty cupboards, for the fathers who rebuilt walls with bare hands.
She dances because Greece remembers, in music, in words, and most of all, in movement.
Alex stepped into the centre as the musicians struck the first sombre chords.
She kept her face still, her gaze low. She moved slowly at first, a soft sway of sorrow. Then a twist, a crouch, a sudden upward lunge. One moment she was seated, lost, broken. The next, she was rising, hands pressed together in prayer, eyes lifted to the sky like she was begging for answers.
When the final note fell, there was a stunned silence. The kind that sits on your chest and refuses to leave.
I looked around the terrace. Eyes wide. Faces streaked with tears. One clap. Then another. And then, the whole taverna stood and applauded. Not the kind of applause that comes from entertainment. The kind that comes from being reminded, just for a moment, of everything we carry, and everything we survive.
Alex returned to the table and sat beside me. She stayed silent, but her tears spoke for her.
***
Then, as if on cue, the bouzouki brightened. The rhythm quickened. The second act began. Eleni, the village’s quiet architect of order, had one glorious exception to her meticulous routines: the precise, communal chaos of Greek dancing. She was first on her feet, dragging the shy and the slow from their chairs. A circle began to form, hands linking, feet tapping. The Kalamatianos had arrived, upbeat and unbothered, leading us gently from grief into joy, as only Greek music can.
I was still seated when Alex looked at me, raised one eyebrow, and pulled me up.
The dance floor was waiting. And in Greece, you don’t say no to life when the music starts.
Then, after a short interlude the mood lifted a notch more.
The first strum of the bouzouki rang out across the taverna like a gauntlet being thrown to the gods: Zorba the Greek.
The opening bars alone have a gravitational pull. It’s not a song. It’s a summoning. Alex moved first, as she always does. The spark before the storm. She swept through the tables like a woman possessed, grabbing hands, sleeves, elbows, and at one point, a startled Canadian. “Up! No one escapes sober or seated!”
And just like that, the circle formed. Tourists, villagers, one baker, and a postman who only came to return a borrowed spatula.
The bouzouki’s cry rose, slow, sly, deliberate. The rhythm crept in. A toe tapped. Someone clapped too early. Anticipation crackled like kindling.
Then: ignition.
The beat snapped. The strings wailed. And the village launched itself into chaos with the enthusiasm of a toddler on a sugar rush.
Feet stomped. Plates clattered. Elbows flew.
Claude attempted a jazz-adjacent interpretation involving shoulder rolls and interpretive arm spirals. Vassiliki twirled with a wooden spoon still in hand, serving philosophy alongside pastry. Theodora clapped in time, eyes sparkling with the kind of mischief only a woman who’s buried three baklava-related feuds can muster.
Even Spiros, our permanent bench fixture, patron saint of Not Getting Up, tapped a toe.
I stood at the edge, glass in hand, dodging elbows, writing mental notes and wondering, again, how we’d ended up turning a broken taverna into something halfway between a celebration and a minor natural disaster.
Mary entered next. Graceful. Dangerous. Spinning like a ballerina. One earring flew off. A man from Sheffield caught it and proposed on the spot. She thanked him with a kiss on the cheek and a generous glass of luminous tsipouro.
At some point, Eleni entered the dance floor, in heels, holding a folder of permits and two glasses of wine. She passed one to Alex, tucked the other under her chin, and danced without dropping a single page.
Tourists filmed. Old men wept. Children ran in circles with ribboned spoons. The music swelled. And then, in the way only fate can time, Spiros rose.
It was biblical. A resurrection. A seismic shift in the balance of the known world.
He lit a cigarette. Looked at the circle like a general surveying a battlefield. Then stepped in.
And good God.
The man moved like liquid marble. Grace in denim. Every step was memory. Every turn was proof that no matter how old you are, you never forget the steps that make you feel alive. He danced like the war had ended. Like the taverna had been saved. Like he’d remembered what it meant to be twenty and full of fire.
And when the song ended, loud, defiant, eternal, the village erupted.
“Cheers.”
Glasses were raised. Plates were shattered.
Claude threw his arms wide and announced the moment “divinely chaotic”.
Maria, ever the philosopher, said it was “a spontaneous act of intergenerational healing”, which was generous considering someone had just tripped over the olive oil tin.
Eleni, meanwhile, was two moves ahead of everyone, and of officialdom.
She calmly texted the insurance agent to pre-empt a claim for the evening’s inevitable damages… then immediately blocked their number, thereby achieving what she later called “a flawless act of bureaucratic self-defence”.
The band struck up for the next song. Theodora served souvlaki mid-spin. Mary deflected two more proposals and one very hopeful phone number. Dimitri refilled tsipouro bottles with an air of innocent menace. And yes, the goat joined in. Katerina was led to the centre by a child named Stavroula, who insisted she was “essential to the dance”.
No one questioned it. The band just played louder.
Zorba watched from under the fig tree. He didn’t dance. He never danced. But the corner of his mouth lifted – a smile, or the memory of one. When asked if he was enjoying himself, he grumbled, “Too much thyme,” and took another sip of wine.
By midnight, the power went out.
By 12:03, it was back on, thanks to Eleni threatening the fuse box with a spatula and the full authority of a woman who once filled out seventeen forms in a single day.
More plates broke. Claude threw his scarf into the air. Dimitri sang a sea shanty he insisted was “historically accurate”. Theodora danced with a meatball skewer like it was a baton of divine justice.
At 1 a.m., someone proposed to the wrong person. At 1:01, they realised. At 1:03, everyone applauded anyway.
At 2, the bouzouki cracked a string. At 2:01, someone replaced it with twine. The music didn’t stop.
I sat with my notebook open, my heart full, and a suspiciously full glass in my hand, watching a village lose its mind in perfect harmony.
This wasn’t a party.
It was proof.
Proof that in a world full of quiet disasters and endless forms, there is still a place for laughter, tsipouro, and dancing until the sky forgets it’s night.
This was our taverna.
Our madness.
Our joy.
Every step was an argument with the darkness, every turn a promise to keep going. The floor shook, the glasses rattled, the tables surrendered their plates and became drums. Even the shy ones were dragged in, caught in the orbit of music that cared less about rhythm and more about whether you had a heartbeat.
We danced because the sea was watching.
We danced because grief was listening.
We danced because joy demanded it.
We danced because it mattered.
We danced because it always matters.
And when the song ended, breathless and shining, we danced again.
Chapter Forty-Four
The Final Week of Not Campaigning
