At the table Lunch or dinner, with rice

Soutzoukakia

Smyrna-style, with cumin and tomato sauce. They arrived in 1922 and stayed.

Soutzoukakia are the dish that explains why Thessaloniki's cooking smells different from southern Greece's.

Where they came from

They came from Smyrna, with the refugees of 1922. That is why they are often called "Smyrneika". In Smyrna they were called "kioftedes"; the name "soutzoukaki" comes from the Turkish sucuk, meaning sausage, and was given for their oblong shape. They are not, then, a variant of the meatball — they are a different dish, with different spices and a different logic.

The Smyrna behind the dish

Through the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, Smyrna was a cosmopolitan port where Greeks, Armenians, Turks, Jews and Europeans lived side by side. Its cooking was the product of that. Armenian versions of the dish were traditionally hotter; the Greek ones held to cumin.

When the refugees came, the dish did not travel as a recipe in a book. It came as the everyday food of thousands of households, and it stayed.

What sets them apart

Two things, both unusual in the Greek cooking of the time:

Cumin, generously. It is the smell you recognise immediately, and the measure of quality.
Garlic worked into soaked breadcrumb, which gives the texture — soft inside, not tight like a burger.

They are shaped long, floured, fried or baked, and then simmered in tomato sauce. That last step is what makes them soutzoukakia: the sauce is not a side, it is part of the cooking.

How they are served

With rice or potatoes, almost always in their sauce. In a meze house they arrive as a small plate; in a taverna as a main.

They go with red wine, though in Thessaloniki you will as often see them with tsipouro.

Where to eat them

In meze houses and tavernas with an Asia Minor leaning, mostly around the markets and in the refugee neighbourhoods: Kalamaria, Toumba, Charilaou.

They need no hunting — they are on every second menu. But the gap between good and mediocre soutzoukakia is wide, and it shows in the cumin: if you cannot smell it before the plate arrives, something is missing.

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