Greek Bougatsa Among the Top Breakfasts in the World

The Greek bougatsa has been ranked fourth best breakfast in the world according to ratings compiled by TasteAtlas this week.

TasteAtlas is an experiential travel online guide for traditional food that collates authentic recipes, food critic reviews, and research articles about popular ingredients and dishes.

It says that bougatsa is a traditional, rustic Greek pie consisting of a phyllo pastry layered with a filling of semolina custard, although there are variations with minced meat or cheese.

Some social media users take exception to TasteAtlas’s claim that the dish is a derivation of the Ottoman word pogatsa, denoting a pie filled with cheese. “The name comes from the Byzantine Greek πογάτσα (pogátsa), from the ancient Roman pānis focācius. Nothing Ottoman about this dish,” says a user on X, formally Twitter.

Another commentator says that the dish is not exactly phyllo; “It contains butter or margarine, and it’s spread differently from phyllo. In Greece we call it “phyllo aeros” which means “airy dough” because traditionally it’s thrown on the counter and lift up and thrown again and this creates air pockets.”

Bougatsa rules in Thessaloniki and northern Greece

Bougatsa is found in Thessaloniki, the undisputed capital of Greek sweets, and in the Central Macedonia region of Northern Greece, particularly the city of Serres, where it was brought in the 20th century by Greek refugees from Constantinople.

The taste of bougatsa varies between regions of Greece. For example, bougatsa in Veria is very sweet and full of cream, while in Thessaloniki it is crunchy and not that sweet, and in Chania Crete it is made of local mizithra cheese and sprinkled with sugar.

One dessert shop in Thessaloniki has recently added a new twist to this dish – making a bougatsa-flavored ice cream!

According to TasteAtlas the best breakfast in the world for 2023 is komplet lepinja from Croatia, followed by roti canai from Malaysia and pão de queijo from Brazil.

TasteAtlas ranks Greek cuisine third best in the world

Earlier this month it ranked Greek cuisine third best in the world.

A total of 395,205 (271,819 valid) dish ratings, and 115,660 (80,863 valid) food product ratings have been recorded.

Based on these ratings, the top 50 food items for each cuisine were extracted, and the best-rated cuisines in the world were ranked according to the average ratings of the best-rated dishes and food products of each country.

Italy and Japan recorded the same average rating, but Italy has taken first place again this year due to a higher rating of its best-rated dish—pizza. The third best-rated cuisine is Greek, followed by the Portuguese and Chinese in fifth place.