The Glorious Greek Kitchen was founded in 2002 on the pristine, green Greek island of Ikaria. We began as a small cooking school that served forth real-life experiences in a traditional Greek village. At first, we offered day classes to visiting tourists, then opened our wings and began scheduling weeklong classes with students who come from far and wide. Now, we run three weeklong cooking sessions each summer on Ikaria and one weeklong culinary sailing expedition each June to the Cyclades. Our classes are held in English.

Ever-restless, we joined forces on several other food-related enterprises so that today the Glorious Greek Kitchen encompasses a wide range of activities, among them: Greek cooking and wine appreciation classes; recipe development and food photography for a wide and varied range of clients; menu development; menu translation into English, German & French; and food- and kitchen-related gifts designed and executed by Diane and Vassilis.

Who we are as individuals:

About Diane:
Diane Kochilas is a food writer, cookbook author, teacher and chef. She is the author of seven books on Greek and Mediterranean cooking in both English and Greek.

Her magnum opus on regional Greek cuisine, The Glorious Foods of Greece (William Morrow 2001), won the prestigious 2002 IACP/Jane Grigson Award for Excellence in Scholarship. Her other books include Against the Grain, 150 Good Carb Recipes from Across the Mediterranean (William Morrow, August 2006); Meze: Small Plates to Savor and Share (William Morrow, June 2003); The Greek Vegetarian (St. Martin’s Press 1996), and The Food and Wine of Greece (St. Martin’s Press 1990). Her forthcoming book Offshore Grilling - 100 Great Mediterranean Recipes (William Morrow) is due out in the Spring of 2007.

Diane is an American of Greek descent. Since 1992 she has been based in Athens but divides her time between Greece’s capital, New York City, and Ikaria, a beautiful, lush island in the eastern Aegean where each summer she runs The Glorious Greek Kitchen Cooking School.

Diane appears frequently on American television, and has been a guest on The Today Show, Cooking with Martha Stewart, Home Cooking with Amy Colman, Cooking with Sara Moulton and many other television shows across the country. Her articles on Greek cuisine and culture appear in The New York Times, Gourmet, Saveur, Food & Wine, Fine Cooking, Gastronomica and other international publications. In Greece, she is the weekly food column and restaurant critic for the country’s largest circulation daily newspaper, Ta Nea, and editor of GreekGourmetraveler, a quarterly Greek gastronomy magazine published by the Hellenic Foreign Trade Board.

She is a partner and consulting chef at Pylos, a contemporary Greek restaurant in New York City, as well as consulting chef at The Waterworks, a contemporary American restaurant with Greek accents, which is scheduled to open in early 2006.

Ms. Kochilas consults for several gourmet Greek food companies and teaches Greek cooking internationally. She has taught at I.C.E. in New York City, King’s Cooking Studios, The Silo, Ramekins, Draeger’s, Central Market, Sur La Table, and the Culinary Institute of America. In Greece, Diane teaches Greek cooking to Greeks and foreigners alike, in her home kitchens in Athens and in Ikaria.

About Vassilis:
Vassilis is an artist, craftsman and all-around Renaissance man who brings his creative talents to every aspect of the company’s activities.

He was trained as a fine artist at New York’s Pratt Institute. Vassili’s work has been shown in galleries in New York and Greece. One of his large sculptures stands at the gateway to Athens just north of Corinth, off the national road at Haidari. His furniture designs have appeared in many of Greece’s top design magazines.

Having built and designed two of his own homes, built and designed custom art furniture for a roster of international clients, designed and executed sculpture and relief paintings for various public works projects, and more, he now concentrates on food photography and music. Vassili and Diane work together on cookbooks, food publications, and other food-related media projects.

Vassili single-handedly renovated the 100-year-old house that houses The Glorious Greek Kitchen. Several years ago, a nascent interest and gift for gardening blossomed into a full-blown passion. He plants and tends the wholly biodynamic garden that surrounds the property on Ikaria and provides the delicious raw ingredients that make their way into the school’s kitchen each summer.