It started as an anthology of texts about souvlaki from Greek and global literature, a collection with excerpts from articles and books that were desperately few. Then it evolved into a research on souvlaki in the Greek region from the time of Homer, and even earlier, up to today's bastardized versions (which are NOT souvlaki). Subsequently, we exhaustively researched Athens' souvlaki and conducted countless interviews, gathered testimonies and stories from souvlaki vendors, and began to compose an incredible story that was much larger than we expected. We tried countless souvlakis, almost from every souvlaki shop in Attica, daily, for years, spoke with people who have studied Greek food (all foreigners), ancient and modern, sought out a myriad of out-of-print and rare books – we even found chronicles from Byzantine soldiers' campaigns that detail what they ate – accounts of travelers, folklorists, searched for songs (almost all satirical, because souvlaki is humble and despised and no one ever took it seriously).

The result is this book, which has not a single photograph and is entirely hand-drawn by Konstantinos Fyntanis, and which constitutes the first attempt to record the history of the most popular Greek street food, perhaps the most well-known Greek food around the world.