Last week I chartered seven helicopters in Greece. I’m still not completely sure how my life got to a place where I can write that sentence, but there it is.
I was hosting 24 guests on our first Yonderlust trip through Greece, and I was determined to get them to Meteora. I had been there in 2011 and never forgot it. Ancient monasteries sit on top of massive stone pillars rising almost straight out of the ground. Photographs don’t come close.
When we started planning the trip, Jesse, my Yonderlust Travel boots-on-the-ground guy in Europe, pushed back. “We can’t do it.” Meteora was too far from Athens. By bus, we would burn nine or 10 hours getting there and back. I kept pushing. “Trust me.”
Then Jesse went there on an inspection trip and called. “We have to come here.” I said, “I know.” So, I chartered seven helicopters.
Watching them fly across the Greek countryside felt like something out of Apocalypse Now. All we needed was “Ride of the Valkyries” blasting through the headsets. We landed on a remote soccer field and spent the day exploring. Meteora was as magnificent as I remembered.
That was probably the most dramatic thing we did, but it wasn’t the most important.
We started in Athens, then moved through Samos, Patmos, Mykonos, Delos and Santorini. We explored ruins, swam in the Aegean and ate very well.
We also ate approximately 935 Greek salads.
I didn’t keep an official count, but 935 feels conservative. Apparently Greek law requires tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, olives and a slab of feta the size of a paving stone to be placed on every table before anyone is allowed to eat anything else.
I had forgotten how good tzatziki is in Greece. I’ve eaten plenty of it in America, and some of it is OK. But eating it there made me realize that much of what I had been eating back home was yogurt that had once heard a rumor about a cucumber. I couldn’t get enough of it.
Santorini surprised me most. I hadn’t cared much for it after my first visit 15 years ago. Turns out Santorini wasn’t the problem. I just hadn’t known where to go. On our final evening, we boarded a catamaran and watched what may have been the finest sunset of my life.
I could fill this entire column telling you where we went and what we did. But that really isn’t what this trip was about.
The 24 people traveling with me had taken a combined 151 Yonderlust trips. One guest was on her 12th. Several had traveled with me five, six or seven times. A few were on their ninth. At some point, without my realizing exactly when it happened, a lot of these people stopped being guests and became close friends.
From the beginning of Yonderlust Travel, I have said that traveling with 24 or 25 people the way we do has never felt like group travel. Around 1,700 people have traveled with me over the past 10 years, and one of the things that has always fascinated me is how quickly a group of people who may barely know each other can begin to feel like old friends. For years, I couldn’t quite put my finger on why that happened.
Then it hit me: it’s the meals.
Most days we sit down together three times—breakfast, lunch and dinner. Do that for 10 days and you learn a lot about people. You learn where they grew up, about their children and grandchildren, old friends, places they love, people they miss and things that matter to them. That’s what people talk about around a table.
Friendship has always mattered a great deal to me. Next to my faith and my family, my friends are among the greatest blessings of my life. I still have close friendships that began in elementary school—the kind where you can go two years without seeing someone and pick right back up where you left off.
I always thought that kind of friendship required decades. I don’t anymore.
I have friends at home whom I love like brothers, but I don’t spend 14 hours a day with them for 10 straight days. On these trips, that is exactly what happens. We eat together, ride together, walk together, sit on boats together, get tired together, laugh together and somewhere along the way become true friends. Then many come back the next year, and we do it again. That changes a relationship.
Yonderlust Travel started because I enjoy showing people places I have discovered. Somehow it became a real year-round business. I get a lot of the credit because my name is attached, but much belongs elsewhere. Jesse and our team back home—Brittany and Simeon—handle a hundred details and make me look more competent than I am.
The strange thing is that I never went looking for this career any more than I went looking for the restaurant business. I grew up without a father steering me toward a profession. My mother was an art teacher and hoped I might become an architect. I probably would have enjoyed that for a while, though I suspect I eventually would have tried to put a restaurant in every building I designed.
Instead, the restaurant business found me. Years later, travel found me too.
Three times in my adult life, at three different churches, I have taken one of those spiritual-gifts assessments. All three times I got the same answer: hospitality.
The first time I was disappointed. I was hoping for wisdom. Maybe discernment. Leadership sounded good. Faith. Something impressive. I got hospitality.
Basically, God told me to feed people and make sure everybody had a chair.
At the time, I felt like I had drawn the short straw. Then I took the test again a few years later. Same answer. Then a third. Eventually even I can take a hint.
I don’t claim to be good at a lot of things, but I am comfortable welcoming people. I know how to feed them. I enjoy showing them a place I love and watching them enjoy it. For most of my adult life I have done that in restaurants. Now I also get to do it while traveling.
I have two of the greatest jobs in the world, and the older I get, the more I realize they are really the same job: hospitality. I feel blessed to have landed in work that fits me, work I love and work I believe I was meant to do.
I am grateful for every person who walks through the doors of one of our restaurants and trusts us with an evening. And I am especially grateful for the people who hand us 10 days of their lives, fly halfway around the world and trust us to make those days count.
I’ll remember the helicopters, Meteora, Patmos, the 935 Greek salads and enough tzatziki to float a fishing boat. I’ll remember that sunset in Santorini. But I suspect what I’ll remember most is who was sitting across from me at the table.
Seven helicopters make for a pretty good story. Twenty-four people around a table make for something much better.
Onward.
RSJ’s Greek Tzatziki
This is the style of tzatziki I fell in love with again in Greece – thick, cool, garlicky, bright and built around full-fat Greek yogurt and well-drained cucumber. The key is keeping excess water out of the sauce and giving it enough time to rest so the garlic, olive oil, herbs and acid come together. Once you eat the real thing in Greece, most American tzatziki tastes like yogurt that once heard a rumor about a cucumber.
Yield: About 2 1/2 cups
Prep time: 20 minutes, plus draining and chilling
Best made: 2-4 hours before serving
2 cups full-fat Greek yogurt, preferably 5% milkfat
1 large English cucumber
2 large cloves garlic, very finely grated or mashed to a paste
2 Tbl extra-virgin olive oil
1 Tbl red wine vinegar
1 Tbl fresh lemon juice
1 1/2 Tbl finely chopped fresh dill
1 tsp kosher salt, divided
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
Grate the cucumber on the large holes of a box grater. Toss with 1/2 teaspoon of the salt and place in a fine-mesh strainer for 15 minutes.
Transfer the cucumber to a clean kitchen towel and squeeze it hard. Then squeeze it again. The cucumber should be almost dry. This is the difference between thick Greek tzatziki and watery cucumber dip.
In a bowl, combine the Greek yogurt, garlic, olive oil, red wine vinegar, lemon juice, dill, remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt and black pepper.
Fold the drained cucumber into the yogurt mixture until thoroughly combined.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Four hours is better. Overnight is excellent.
Taste and adjust the salt, vinegar or lemon if needed. Spoon into a serving bowl and drizzle with a little additional extra-virgin olive oil.
Chef’s Notes
Use full-fat yogurt. This is not the place for zero-fat anything. You want richness and body.
Drain the cucumber thoroughly. Most bad tzatziki fails here.
Don’t overdo the garlic. It gets considerably stronger while the sauce rests.
Red wine vinegar matters. Lemon brings freshness, but the vinegar gives it that unmistakable Greek character.
Serve it cold, but not ice-cold. Let it sit out for 10-15 minutes before serving so you can actually taste everything.
Optional Chef Upgrades
Strain the yogurt first. Even good Greek yogurt can carry extra whey. Put it in cheesecloth or a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl for 1-2 hours in the refrigerator before mixing. You will get a thicker, richer texture.
Bloom the garlic in the olive oil. Mash the garlic into a paste with a pinch of salt, stir it into the olive oil and let it sit for 10-15 minutes before adding it to the yogurt. This rounds off the harsh edge and spreads the garlic flavor more evenly through the sauce.
Add a little fresh mint with the dill. Keep the dill dominant, but add 1 tsp very finely chopped fresh mint. You should not taste “mint tzatziki.” It should simply taste brighter and fresher.
Serving Suggestions
Warm pita or grilled flatbread
Grilled lamb chops
Chicken souvlaki
Pork souvlaki
Gyros
Grilled fish
Roasted potatoes
Grilled vegetables
Raw vegetables as a dip
Falafel
Lamb burgers
Spread on sandwiches or wraps
Spoon over roasted eggplant
Serve alongside rice or grain bowls
Use as a sauce for grilled shrimp
Serve it with fried zucchini chips
Serve it with warm pita and try not to eat half the bowl before dinner starts.
(Robert St. John is a chef, restauranteur and published cookbook author who lives in Hattiesburg, Miss.)
