The Soup of the Mountain and the City - Edible places and other “urban-rural” encounters

Patari Metaptychiakou
Wednesday 22/4, 18:00

On Wednesday 22/4,we meet Nafsika Papacharalambous, a food anthropologist and chef, and we transform TAM into a large kitchen, where places and ingredients meet, mix, and recombine. The “soup” functions as a shared liquid field in which different elements, cultivation practices, and food relations are explored, coexist, and are transformed into a new edible condition and collective action.

INGREDIENTS:
The PELION CHORA team brings ingredients from the mountain.
What does an “edible mountain” mean, and how much of what we find in the markets of Volos—and the city more broadly—is produced in Pelion? We search for fruits and vegetables, cooperative products, or other materials connected to our study areas: herbs from the mountain; products from olive landscapes (oil, olives); fruits (e.g. apples) and vegetables from cultivated land; cooperative products (e.g. ZAGORIN); small-scale artisanal goods sold in Pelion’s tourist markets (e.g. Makrinitsa: kritharaki, hilopites, etc.). How far does the mountain reach? We bring mountain products and map the places they come from.

The COHABITING IN THE GARDEN team brings ingredients from the city.
What can one find at a street market, a small grocery shop, or a greengrocer? Are these locally produced in Thessaly, or do they connect to more distant geographies? Are they products of intensive agriculture and trade, or small-scale domestic production? We also look for “imperfect” vegetables or fruits—leftovers that might otherwise be discarded. Where do these products come from, how are they produced, and where do they end up if they are not bought?

The GEOGRAPHIES OF FOOD team brings ingredients from the region of Magnesia.
How is food mapped within a specific geography? What networks of production, distribution, and consumption shape it? We look for products originating from different areas of Magnesia (mountain, plain, city) and reflect on their journeys—from place of production to the plate. What do these routes reveal about the relationships between the local and the supra-local?

The collective cooking will be accompanied by a talk by Nafsika Papacharalambous titled “The Smell of the Countryside: Co-dwelling and Identity in Times of Crisis”, and a screening of the documentary The Grocer (2013) by Dimitris Koutsiabasakos.

You are all warmly invited to cook, eat, and discuss with us edible places, unexpected “urban-rural” encounters, and fluid, hybrid geographies around a large table and a bowl of soup!

“The Soup of the Mountain and the City” is prepared and consumed collectively as part of the Spring Semester 2026 courses:

PELION CHORA. Dissecting and Reweaving a Mountain
Instructor: Metaxia Markaki

Cohabiting in the Garden: Architectures of Care
Instructor: Petros Fokaidis

GEOGRAPHIES OF FOOD
Instructor: Thaleia Marou