Title: Traditional, Illegal.: The Research Trip (Food Edition)
Program: Traditional, Illegal — A Series of Food Activism Events conceived by Nikos Karaflos for Dexamenes
Location: Kourouta, Dexamenes
Disclaimer: Viewer Discretion Advised
The following content includes depictions of the traditional roasting and consumption of whole pigs as part of longstanding cultural and culinary traditions. While presented in their cultural context, these depictions may be disturbing or upsetting to some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised.
For three days in April 2026, Dexamenes became a temporary laboratory for food, culture, and biodiversity. Farmers, researchers, chefs, policymakers, entrepreneurs, artists, journalists, and cultural practitioners gathered by the sea in Kourouta to explore a simple but urgent question: how can traditional food practices survive, evolve, and remain meaningful in the contemporary world?
Traditional, Illegal: The Research Trip (Food Edition) was held as part of Traditional, Illegal, a long-term platform for research, activism, education, and cultural inquiry conceived by Nikos Karaflos for Dexamenes. This edition was co-organised by Vasiliki Poula and Theoni Androulidaki of limen in collaboration with Nikos Karaflos and the Dexamenes team, bringing together more than twenty participants from across agriculture, gastronomy, academia, public policy, entrepreneurship, journalism, culture, and the arts.
Hosted before the beginning of the tourist season, Dexamenes opened exclusively for the research trip, transforming the hotel into a space for dialogue, experimentation, and collective thinking around the future of food traditions. The gathering explored how traditional practices survive, adapt, or disappear within contemporary economic and regulatory systems, while addressing broader questions of biodiversity, food security, cultural heritage, and rural development.
Research unfolded not only through discussions, but around shared tables. Participants explored fermentation, artisan bread making, soil workshops, and meals rooted in local traditions, including gournopoula — the slow-roasted whole pig that remains one of the Peloponnese’s most emblematic culinary practices. These meals became living case studies through which participants examined the cultural, economic, and regulatory realities surrounding traditional food systems today.
Participants were divided into two working groups. The first, Living Practices, focused on the cultural dimension of food: what should be preserved, why it matters, and how traditions can remain alive and meaningful across generations. The second, New Pathways, explored how traditional practices and forgotten varieties could become economically viable through new models of entrepreneurship, collaboration, and market participation.
Bread as Cultural Heritage
The Living Practices group identified bread as one of the most powerful carriers of cultural memory. More than a staple food, bread emerged as a social and cultural artifact connecting rituals, stories, skills, and communities across generations. The group proposed that preserving bread traditions requires not only safeguarding recipes and techniques, but also creating cultural programmes, educational initiatives, and communal spaces through which this knowledge can continue to be shared.
Bread became the central point of reference for the discussion. Participants identified it as a distinctive cultural artefact precisely because of its ability to operate across multiple scales simultaneously: an everyday necessity, a symbol embedded in Greek culture and history, a source of nourishment, and a practice capable of connecting people across generations and backgrounds.
Rather than treating bread as a product, the group used it as a lens for examining living heritage more broadly. Who decides what is worth preserving? Who carries responsibility for safeguarding traditions? How can inherited knowledge evolve without losing what makes it meaningful? These questions provided a direction, moving from definition toward the conditions needed for traditions to remain alive and relevant.
A recurring theme was the tension between formal and informal knowledge systems. Participants reflected on the value of experience-based knowledge held by farmers, bakers, winemakers and older generations, and the difficulty of translating these practices into contemporary regulatory, educational and commercial frameworks. Tradition was understood not as something fixed, but as a dynamic process continuously adapted by each generation.
The discussion also raised questions of infrastructure: what kinds of networks and relationships are needed to sustain living food traditions? Rather than converging on a shared agenda, contributions tended to reflect each person’s own field, amongst others: an art exhibition to raise awareness; policy change around protected products; seminars with bakers; partnerships between new bakeries and older heritage ones; and international networks for food heritage. Taken together, these proposals were complementary in terms of depth and scale. The key takeaway was this: bringing together people from different backgrounds to talk about cultural heritage naturally generates a more resilient set of interventions than any single field or actor could produce alone.
Reviving Forgotten Varieties
The New Pathways group focused on the challenge faced by small producers who wish to cultivate traditional or lesser-known seed varieties that lack commercial demand. Their proposal was a model of micro-contract agriculture based on advance commitments: chefs, hotels, restaurants, and food initiatives commit in advance to purchasing the entirety of a future harvest.
By reducing financial risk for growers, this model creates incentives to cultivate forgotten varieties, regenerate biodiversity, and multiply rare seeds currently preserved only in small quantities within seed banks. Farmers gain economic security, while chefs and hospitality businesses gain access to unique ingredients and flavours that are increasingly disappearing from contemporary food systems. The result is a practical framework that supports biodiversity, strengthens local economies, and reconnects consumers with agricultural heritage.
From Research to Action
What began as a conversation has already evolved into action. Dexamenes has started testing this model in practice through advance purchasing commitments and financial support for small producers cultivating dozens of different crop varieties.
The first phase focuses on tomatoes, with more than fifteen traditional varieties already planted. In parallel, research has begun on multiplying seed stock from varieties preserved within the official seed banks of the Greek Ministry of Agriculture, creating new pathways for their reintroduction into cultivation and the food chain.
Traditional, Illegal continues as a platform where research becomes practice, exploring how culture, biodiversity, and entrepreneurship can work together to shape more resilient food systems for the future.
limen is an initiative launched in February 2025 with the aim of highlighting culture as a source of sustainable economic and social value. The organisation pursues this mission through its own projects as well as collaborations with stakeholders operating in the fields of real estate development and management, culture, and the creative economy.
To date, limen’s work has focused on the cultural activation of underused and temporarily vacant spaces, exploring how culture can contribute to improving urban life. Its projects have been implemented with the support of the Bloomberg Philanthropies Youth Climate Action Fund, the City of Athens, and Astylab.
**Dexamenes is a post-war winery reimagined as a meaningful-luxury hotel+ in Western Peloponnese—a hybrid of hospitality, culture, and experience. It operates as a multidimensional platform that brings together a hotel, a cultural centre, and a space for research and action, with the ambition of redefining the way hospitality is experienced.
Rooted in a deep respect for history, the environment, and a meaningful connection to place, Dexamenes functions as a culture-driven community hub, creating purpose-led experiences through art, gastronomy, nature, and local culture
Participants:
host: Nikos Karaflos, Dexamenes
limen co-founder: Vasiliki Poula
limen co-founder: Theoni Androulidaki
Anastasia Tsagkarakou, Hellenic Agricultural Organization – ELGO DIMITRA
Giorgos Pittas, Greek Gastronomy Guide
Dimitris Antonopoulos, Athens Gastronomic Forum / SPORA
Nikolaos Chandolias, Baker-Artist
Georgia Kotretsos, THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY
Nikos Erinakis, Ass. Professor of Philosophy, University of Crete; Poet
Christina Androulidaki, founder of CanGallery
Nikos Ververidis, STOA CULTURE, ελculture
Fragkiskos Karelas, Eumelia Organic Agrotourism Farm
Iason Ligas, Viticulturist & Winemaker, Voi Winery
Adam Markakis, Founder, Astylab; Founding Partner, Idea Machines
Dinos Machairas, IFOAM Organics Europe
Dimitris Panagiotopoulos, Agricultural University of Athens (professor)
Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Head & Co-founder, Open Farm
Zoi Parasidi, Journalist
Angeliki Pittarokoili, Marketing, Communications & Insights Director, Endeavor
Dimitra Spiliopoulou, Managing Director, ELIS LAND ESTATE, Dia Elis
Photography by Giannis Boziaris
