Holy Monastery of Saint John the Theologian

My Big Fat Greek Festival: The St. John's Festival on Ios

"At the festival of St. John at the mountain monastery I arrived along a tiny, winding track in the dark and was led into the monastery's back garden where Greek women were cleaning large bowls and huge pots were heating soup and wild goat; I was handed a bowl with thick, rice-porridge-like soup and tender chunks of wild goat that fell off the bone and tasted a lot like lamb. Thick, obviously homemade bread soaked up the hot soup, then came wine and bread and different cheeses “from Ios,” including a soft goat cheese an old man gave me that was among the milkiest and smoothest I’ve ever had. I sat at a table of inquisitive, cigarette-smoking old Greek men while a small grandmother in a black shawl watched me clean my plate, later catching a few traditional dances (and some locals inventing moves) as the band played; people now stay until around midnight before driving back to town, though in the old days they would have taken donkeys up to the monastery to stay the night. It was the most cultural Greek thing I’d done in my three trips to Greece." - Matthew Kepnes