Greek Food Trivia
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50 free Greek Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Greek food is built on wheat, olive oil and wine, and this quiz works through the whole table. It starts with the classics everyone orders, feta, tzatziki, souvlaki and gyros, Greek salad and moussaka, and asks what is actually in them: which milk feta must be made from, what meat a real gyros uses, and why the village salad has no lettuce. Then it goes deeper into meze, pies, soups and sweets, from taramasalata on Clean Monday to magiritsa after the Easter midnight liturgy and the coin hidden in a New Year vasilopita. You will also meet the drinks (ouzo, tsipouro, retsina, Metaxa, the Thessaloniki-born frappé), the regions (Kalamata olives, Chios mastic, Santorini fava and Assyrtiko), and the history: the Mediterranean triad of ancient Greece, the first Greek cookbook printed on Syros in 1828, and Nikolaos Tselementes, the French-trained chef who put bechamel on moussaka and whose surname became the Greek word for a cookbook. Easy questions suit anyone who has eaten at a taverna; the expert tier asks about klephts, lucanica and Byzantine kokoretsi. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the individual dishes and drinks, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Under EU rules, real feta is sheep's milk optionally mixed with up to what proportion of goat's milk?
30%
The name has been a protected designation of origin since 2002 and is limited to cheese made in mainland Greece and Lesbos.
Q 02In Greece itself, an authentic gyros is traditionally made with which meat?
Pork
The name means 'turn', a direct translation of the Turkish döner; lamb and beef versions are mostly a foreign habit.
Q 03Around Athens and in southern Greece, a souvlaki skewer is commonly called what?
Kalamaki
The word means 'little reed' or 'little straw'; souvlaki itself comes from souvla, a skewer, borrowed from the Latin subula.
Q 04Which vegetable is mixed with strained yogurt and garlic to make tzatziki?
Cucumber
The word travelled into Greek from the Turkish cacık, and the dip is the standard sauce for souvlaki and gyros.
Q 05The traditional Greek horiatiki salad differs from foreign 'Greek salads' by lacking which ingredient?
Lettuce
The proper version is tomatoes, onion, feta and Kalamata olives with oregano, imagined as a farmer's breakfast.
Q 06The modern Greek moussaka, with its bechamel top, was created in the 1920s by which chef?
Nikolaos Tselementes
He was French-trained, and his surname is now a Greek synonym for 'cookbook'.
Q 07Besides ground meat, moussaka is usually based on which vegetable?
Aubergine
Potato-based versions exist too, and the Turkish and Egyptian dishes of the same name are quite different.
Q 08Pastitsio, the baked pasta and bechamel dish, originated in which Greek island group?
The Ionian Islands
The name comes from the Venetian pasticcio; the islands spent centuries under Venice, which is why their cooking leans Italian.
Q 09Spanakopita is a filo pie filled with cheese and which vegetable?
Spinach
A version without cheese or egg is eaten during Orthodox fasts; the cheese-and-spinach one is strictly spanakotiropita.
Q 10The paper-thin pastry filo takes its name from the Greek fyllo, meaning what?
Leaf
The modern ultra-thin form was perfected in Ottoman palace kitchens by the 15th century; supermarket filo only arrived in the 1970s.
Q 11Ouzo is a dry aperitif flavoured with what?
Anise
The first distillery opened at Tyrnavos in 1856; add water and the clear spirit turns cloudy white.
Q 12Retsina owes its distinctive flavour to what?
Pine resin
Ancient Greeks sealed amphorae with Aleppo pine resin to keep the air out; barrels made that unnecessary by the 3rd century, but drinkers had grown to like the taste.
Q 13Metaxa, the amber Greek spirit created in 1888, is a blend of brandy and what?
Muscat wine
Founder Spyros Metaxa came from a family of silk merchants; the brand was sold to Rémy Cointreau in 2000.
Q 21Avgolemono, the sauce and soup base, is made by whisking broth with what two ingredients?
Egg and lemon
The name literally means 'egg-lemon'; the starch from rice or orzo cooked in the broth helps keep the emulsion from curdling.
Q 22Magiritsa, the soup eaten right after the Paschal midnight liturgy, is made from what?
Lamb offal
It uses the innards removed from the lamb that will be roasted the next day, and breaks the 40-day fast of Great Lent.
Q 23Taramasalata is a meze made from what?
Salted fish roe
Cod, carp or grey mullet roe is beaten with bread or potato, oil and lemon; the good stuff is beige, and the pink colour in shops is dye.
Q 14Tsipouro, the pomace brandy of Thessaly and Epirus, was said to be first made by 14th-century monks where?
Mount Athos
A version of the same monastic spirit flavoured with aniseed eventually became ouzo.
Q 15Frappé coffee, the foam-topped iced Nescafé drink, was invented in 1957 in which Greek city?
Thessaloniki
It shares the modern breakfast table with Greek coffee, mountain tea, koulouri and bougatsa.
Q 16Kalamata olives take their name from a city in which region of Greece?
The Peloponnese
Within the EU the name is protected, so the same almond-shaped purple olive grown elsewhere is sold as 'Kalamon'.
Q 17Mastic, the aromatic resin used in sweets and liqueur, traditionally comes from which island?
Chios
The droplets are called 'tears'; Hippocrates recommended it for digestion and bad breath, and the Byzantine emperors made its trade a monopoly.
Q 18Greek fava, the yellow puree served as a dip, is made from what?
Split peas
Despite the name, no fava beans are involved; the PDO version uses seeds of Spanish vetchling grown only on one volcanic island and its neighbours.
Q 19Assyrtiko, the crisp white grape grown in basket-trained vines on volcanic ash, comes from which island?
Santorini
Many of the island's vineyards are ungrafted and centuries old because Santorini is described as phylloxera-free.
Q 20Fasolada, sometimes called the national food of the Greeks, is a soup of what?
White beans
The modern version uses tomatoes and white beans, both New World plants, but the dish traces back to ancient Greece.
Q 24On which day of the Orthodox calendar do Greeks traditionally eat taramasalata with onions and lemon?
Clean Monday
Clean Monday opens Great Lent, and its meatless, bloodless table of shellfish, roe dips and lagana bread is a national picnic day.
Q 25Skordalia, the thick garlic puree, classically partners which dish on Greece's national day?
Batter-fried salt cod
The base can be potato, walnuts, almonds or soaked stale bread; the name is a pleonasm of Greek skordo and Italian agliata, both meaning garlicky.
Q 26Kleftiko, slow-roasted lamb sealed in paper, is named after the klephts. Who were they?
Ottoman-era guerrillas and outlaws
The bandits cooked meat in covered pits so no smoke would give them away; the word shares a root with kleptomania.
Q 27Saganaki, best known as fried cheese, is named after what?
A small two-handled frying pan
Any dish cooked in the little pan qualifies, including shrimp and mussels saganaki; the flaming version is a North American habit.
Q 28Halloumi, the squeaky grilling cheese served all over Greek menus, actually originates from where?
Cyprus
Under EU and US trademark law only cheese made there can carry the name; the UK is its biggest importer.
Q 29Kokoretsi, the spit-roasted Paschal favourite, consists of seasoned offal wrapped in what?
Lamb or goat intestines
An identical dish is attested in Byzantine cuisine under names such as plektin and koiliochorda.
Q 30Loukaniko, the Greek sausage, is typically flavoured with fennel seed and what?
Orange peel
The name descends from the Roman lucanica sausage of Lucania and has been used in Greece since at least the 4th century.