It’s no longer what you eat that defines who you are but how you eat it. Globalization has introduced the world’s cuisines into people’s kitchens, thanks to web portals like Gourmed.gr. Odyssey spoke to its founder, Alexis Protonotarios about his plans to take the Mediterranean culinary traditions truly global, with German and French content and plans to expand the network to North America.
Human history can be seen as a chronicle of humankind’s relationship with food. As early as the Bronze Age, once humans had secured sufficient food, civilizations like the Minoans developed their gourmet sensitivities and set high gustatory standards for the foods they consumed. Indeed, it seems that even five thousand years ago, diet wasn’t necessarily rooted in ingredients that were available but in what tasted good. The world has changed since the times of Minos but human nature is essentially the same: people enjoy food and seek food that tastes good. It’s this simple, basic human instinct that’s behind the popularity of Mediterranean–and especially, Greek–cuisine and which has catapulted Gourmed into a lifestyle brand that has won a faithful audience around the world with its invitation to “taste the Med” through food and travel.
“Gourmed.gr has enjoyed tremendous success in terms of visitors and advertisers,” says Alexis Protonotarios, founder of Gourmed.gr and chairman of the digital advertising agency Can Communications. “Indeed, we’ve been so successful that we’re about to launch Gourmed in Germany, with Italian and U.S. sites to follow soon.”
Launched four years ago in Athens by a small group of foodies and wine connoisseurs, Gourmed has grown from their sheer passion for the food and wines of the Mediterranean into a thriving portal that attracts 240,000 monthly visitors. Through www. gourmed.gr, visitors can access recipes, find information about Mediterranean culinary traditions, travel, health and nutrition, as well as cookbook and restaurant reviews. A completely revamped site will launch early in 2007 along with the German-language Gourmed. There are also plans for an Italian Gourmed highlighting Italian cuisine and travel in Italy.
“Our visitors grow at a minimum rate of five percent per month,” says Protonotarios, adding that seventy percent of the portal’s visitors are from the United States. “Setting up and running the worldwide Gourmed network from the United States is our next and most important step. We are actively seeking a U.S. partner who combines knowledge [of the US market] and contacts there with the necessary ‘Mediterranean flair’.”
The company’s plans are in line with trends that show consumers are increasingly interested in health issues. Greek culinary traditions are a centerpiece of the Mediterranean diet, which numerous studies have lauded for its healthful approach to nutrition. Indeed, Greek and Italian foods are so popular around the world because they combine good nutrition with flavor. Gourmed has built its lifestyle brand on these characteristics, enlisting local experts and seasoned travel and food writers in each country to offer the portal’s visitors examples of how they can live the good life associated with Mediterranean cultures.
“Gourmed.gr is about how we would like to live our lives,” says Protonotarios. “It fulfills our need for a better, simpler life, a tastier life in all its forms and functions.”
In just four years, Gourmed has built a tremendous culinary resource that includes a collection of more than 2,000 recipes from nineteen Mediterranean countries. Content includes reviews of Greek wines, a glossary of ingredients used in Mediterranean cooking, and travel itineraries highlighting traditional country inns and local tavernas or trattorias offering exceptional fare.
“This is exactly the type of information every discerning traveler seeks but has trouble finding,” Protonotarios says. “Our visitors are people who somehow came into contact with Greek cuisine and culture and now seek additional information and recipes to enhance their Greek-Mediterranean culinary experience.”
Gourmed is far more than a portal with recipes or cooking tips. Although its database of recipes includes the standards of Greek cuisine, the portal has also worked with Greek chefs, food writers, and producers of traditional products to develop recipes that reflect contemporary tastes, lifestyles, and food trends. Many of these recipes feature regional Greek produce, such as the horn-shaped sweet red peppers from Florina combined with spicy goat cheese in a chicken salad that is anything but ordinary or the simple fava popular on the Cycladic islands.
Gourmed, adds Protonotarios, “has helped change the perception of Greek food and products internationally”–and this is something the Gourmed team hopes to continue doing by expanding its content offerings to include all countries of the Mediterranean and offering content in languages other than Greek and English.
“Gourmed is a lifestyle brand with unlimited global potential. It’s up to us and our young, international team to serve it up properly to the world. Hence our motto: ‘Taste the Med’,” he says.
Issue: Jan/Feb 2007