Patrikon

Patrikon pasteli is handmade from the purest and most densely nutritious ingredients

Discovery

Pasteli translated into English is “brittle” which I deem to be slightly inaccurate. Actually pasteli is a supple blend of sesame seeds and honey which is sticky rather than crisp. On August 15th every summer at the celebration of the feast of the Virgin Mary, my father would dispense slabs of pasteli wrapped in thick white paper emblazoned with a cross. My association with this confectionery was pleasurably tinged with a slightly religious prompting.

Patrikon is a traditional company creating pasteli and was founded in Thebes near Athens in 2019 by two brothers Giorgos and Kostas Karagiorgos and their cousin Konstantinos. They approached our site with their premium sweets.

Their pasteli is handmade from the purest and most densely nutritious ingredients such as black sesame seeds which contain 60% more calcium than white sesame seeds, the renowned pistachios of Aegina, organic buckthorn from Meteora and Greek honey from Mount Helicon.

Patrikon in Greek means family home, the place where we grew up, formed our first memories and experienced our initiation into tastes and smells. The producers’ mission is to create flavours that take us back to our childhood.

Patrikon in Greek means family home, the place where we grew up, formed our first memories and experienced our initiation into tastes and smells. The producers’ mission is to create flavours that take us back to our childhood.

They produce their Melichio pasteli bars according to a recipe entrusted to them by the fathers of the Holy Monastery of Makariotissa in Thebes, with love and respect to traditionTo this simple and trusted recipe, Patrikon has added ingredients like cinnamon, nuts and citrus fibres that make their bars unique.

For A Magic Cabinet, we have selected their pasteli with black sesame seeds, honey and cinnamon and their pasteli with sesame seeds, honey, organic buckthorn and cinnamon.

The producers control the whole production process.

Memory

The three founders have been creating traditional Greek products for more than twenty years. They initially made them for friends and family and then sold them in their drive through store on the national road where the pasteli used to sell briskly.

The store closed owing to the transformation of the national road and the three cousins, wanting to continue to work together, founded Patrikon.

The story of Patrikon’s pasteli dates back to the first ascetic monks of the Byzantine Era who combined honey and sesame seeds to make “sisamis”, a nutritious and delicious sweet snack which played an important role in their quotidian diet.

Narration

Their production unit is in Thebes, Boeotia in central Greece and they employ a staff of ten.

The first product they created is the pasteli with black sesame which became very popular. “Nowadays people prefer healthy snacks and there are not many of them in the market without sugar”, says Giorgos.

The story of Patrikon’s pasteli dates back to the first ascetic monks of the Byzantine Era who combined honey and sesame seeds to make “sisamis”, a nutritious and delicious sweet snack which played an important role in their quotidian diet.

Both sesame seeds and honey were basic components of the Ancient Greeks’ daily diet which is why they continue to be combined in pasteli.

Pasteli has always been a very popular sweet snack in Greece, especially after the Second World War due to its low price and nutritional bounty.