The Greek soup of dried white beans often called Greece’s national food is fasolada.
Fasolada is made by simmering dried white beans with olive oil and vegetables, commonly tomatoes, carrots, onion, celery, herbs, and bay leaf. Recipes vary: some are brothy, some thick, and a few include meat, but the defining base is the bean-and-vegetable combination.
Its reputation as a national dish reflects its place in everyday Greek home cooking rather than a single ceremonial origin. Beans are inexpensive, filling, and suited to the Mediterranean pantry, where olive oil, herbs, vegetables, and legumes form a core culinary pattern. The modern tomato-based version also uses a New World ingredient introduced after the Columbian exchange.
Fasolada is not the same as kakavia, a fish soup, or avgolemono, whose characteristic enrichment comes from egg and lemon. It is also distinct from gigantes plaki, in which large beans are baked with tomato and herbs rather than simmered into soup.