The classic Athenian meal revolves around sitos, the staple grain food (barley bread, flatbread, porridge), accompanied by opson, the "what-goes-with-it": vegetables, cheese, olives, sometimes fish. The deipnon (evening meal) is the main occasion. Wine (oinos) mixed with water always accompanies, never neat. The symposion, a banquet reserved for free men, follows the meal: drinking, discussion, philosophy — it is the very setting where Socrates deployed his speech.

Barley (krithê), far more than wheat, is the daily grain of the modest Athenian; kneaded raw or grilled into a flatbread, maza is the bread of the poor and the wise. Olive oil, the liquid gold of Attica, binds everything: seasoning, cooking, offering. Socrates' frugality makes these two humble ingredients his true signature.