Restes

Restes (bunches, bunches, hangers) are called in Chios the way the inhabitants of the island hang the tomatoes on the walls of their houses. Tomatoes form a necklace and are kept in a cool and shady place throughout the winter.

Tradition tells us that in the second half of the 19th century Greek sailors brought to our islands the first seeds from a tomato which withstood conditions of absolute, almost, drought and gave much smaller fruit but excellent taste. This tomato flourished especially in Santorini with which it associated its name and became famous as «Santorini tomato».

But while the Santorini people dried the tomato in the sun, making it "sun-dried", the Chians followed a fairly different treatment, drying in the shade.

For Chios, leftovers were an important source of food, because before the spread of refrigerators, it was the way to preserve and consume tomatoes for a whole year.

The tomato is planted from mid-February to mid-March and the fruit ripens and is harvested from mid-July to late August.

During the harvest, the important thing is that a part of the stalk remains on the fruit because with it the rests will be tied and formed. As anhydrous tomatoes contain few juices - unlike Santorini which are completely dehydrated - when some people want to use them as fresh they put them in water for a while and it is enough to get the shape they had when first cut.

One of the most impressive spectacles in Chios is the rests in Pyrgi in Mastic villages, where the leftovers are hung on the scratches, a lime coating with various linear engraved drawings (or ornaments), which, according to others, are an oriental style, and according to others, of Italian origin.

The designs are carved on the plaster with a fork scratching the outer white coating, to show the bottom gray layer, and consist of squares, rhombuses, triangles while many of them have bouquets in vases, storks, tree branches, oblong leaves, etc. The marriage of geometric but cool gray-white patterns with the dazzling warm red of the rest creates a beautiful contrast and reminds us how two foreign cultural goods came to our place, were assimilated and finally became elements that characterize the cultural identity of Chios.