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Meze Is About Variety, Not Volume

Meze is the most sociable way to eat: a table of small dishes, everyone reaching across each other, no course structure to worry about. The trouble for home cooks in the UK is that a Greek or Cypriot table looks effortless — dozens of little bowls, everything arriving at once — and it is very easy to over-cater. A gathering of six can end up with enough food for twelve, and half of it goes in the bin while everyone groans about eating too much.

The fix is to think in portions per guest rather than bowls per table. Once you have a rough number in your head, you can cook confidently, keep the variety high, and still leave room for a proper pudding.

The Numbers That Actually Work

For a meze spread that replaces a main course, plan on each guest eating the equivalent of roughly a dozen small mouthfuls in total. Split that between cold and hot:

• Cold meze: 5-7 mouthfuls per person — dips, olives, salads, cheeses, cured meats.
• Hot meze: 6-8 mouthfuls per person — grilled meats, fried bites, vegetable dishes.
• Bread: 1.5-2 pittas or flatbreads per person across the whole meal.

As a dish count, aim for two cold dishes for every three or four guests, and one hot dish per two to three guests, with a sensible ceiling of about eight dishes in total for six people. Beyond that you are making work for yourself rather than pleasing anyone.

Cold Meze: Where Generosity Pays

Cold dishes are cheap and forgiving, so this is where you can afford to be generous. They also do the heavy lifting on variety, which is the whole point of meze.

• Dips — tzatziki, taramasalata, hummus, melitzanosalata. A 200g tub serves four to six people as one of several dips. Allow two to three tablespoons of dip per person in total, and never serve fewer than three dips; the contrast between them is the pleasure.
• Olives and pickles — 40-50g of olives per person. A 200g jar does six comfortably, with a few left for the cook.
• Salads and cooked vegetables — 60-80g per person per dish. A horiatiki for six means three or four ripe tomatoes, half a cucumber, a small red onion, a handful of olives and 100g of feta.
• Cheese and cured meat — 40-50g per person of each if they are a feature, and considerably less if they are a garnish.

Hot Meze: Cook in Batches, Serve in Waves

Hot meze is where portions get out of hand, because everything comes out of the pan in unpredictable numbers. Work backwards: decide how many pieces each guest should have per dish, then multiply.

• Small fried or grilled bites — keftedes, halloumi, saganaki, courgette fritters: two to three pieces per person per dish.
• Meat and seafood — 80-100g cooked weight per person in total across all the hot dishes. If you are doing lamb chops, that is roughly one each with a spare for the table.
• Pies and bakes — spanakopita or tyropita cut into 5cm squares: two squares per person. A 30cm tray serves eight to ten.
• Prawns and small seafood — three or four per person, whether grilled plain or simmered in tomato.

Serve hot dishes in two or three waves rather than all at once. It stops the table being swamped, keeps everything at the right temperature, and lets people pace themselves properly.

Tuning the Spread to Your Guests

Numbers are a starting point, not a rule. Adjust for the occasion:

• Drinks before food: add a dish or two and lean salty — olives, cheese, salted nuts. Alcohol makes people graze.
• A lunchtime spread: cut the hot meze by a third. Nobody wants a tray of fried food at noon in July.
• Vegetarian guests: count their portion as two or three cold dishes plus one substantial hot dish, such as baked aubergine or giant beans in tomato.
• Children: assume half portions, and keep one plain dish — bread, halloumi, plain rice — on hand for fussy eaters.
• A pudding planned: reduce the total meze by about 20 per cent.

A Simple Plan for Six

Here is what that looks like in practice. Four cold dishes: three 200g dips, a bowl of olives, a horiatiki, and a plate of feta with cucumber and oregano. Three hot dishes: 18-20 small keftedes, 12 slices of grilled halloumi, and 20 prawns. Ten to twelve pittas, warmed in batches as you go.

That is 42-48 hot mouthfuls between six people, roughly seven each, plus the cold spread — comfortably enough, with a little left over for someone's lunch the next day. If you would rather have four hot dishes, drop the prawns and add a tray of spanakopita cut into twelve squares, keeping the per-person maths identical.

Write your numbers down before you shop, and note what disappeared fastest afterwards. Two or three gatherings in, you will have your own house rules, and meze will stop being a gamble and become the most relaxed way you feed people.