Diane Kochilas

Diane Kochilas is the author of The Glorious Foods of Greece, which won the prestigious Jane Grigson Award for Excellence in Scholarship by the IACP in 2001. She has authored two other books on Greek cuisine, The Greek Vegetarian and The Food and Wine of Greece. She is chef-owner of Villa Thanassi, a real country restaurant with a real country garden, which she runs every summer together with her husband, Vassilis Stenos, on their ancestral island, Ikaria. On Ikaria, she also operates The Glorious Greek Kitchen Cooking School and organizes culinary trips and walking tours in Athens and in other parts of the country. Diane was born and raised in New York City. She moved to Greece with her husband in 1992 and now divides her time between New York, Ikaria, and Athens, where she is the city's best-known restaurant critic and food journalist.