A nice bowl of tripe
μπάκα – a pot belly
A late start to the year. My apologies. However, μπάκα is an appropriate start as many of us will have put on a little weight due to Christmas and New Year excesses.
Bruce Willis’s annoying girlfriend in Pulp Fiction says at one point that she would like a “pot”. Willis asks her why she wants a pot belly or a beer belly. The Greek subtitles translated it as μπάκα, a word of Albanian origin.
The word I normally use is σκεμπές (plural – σκεμπέδες). This one is from Turkish. Literally, it means an animal’s stomach, particularly the part that gives us tripe (πατσάς). By extension, it means a beer gut. I imagine a σκεμπές is bigger and less flattering than a μπάκα, but I might be wrong.
Going back to tripe, as Greeks rolled out of bars and clubs at 3 or 4am, they often made for the πατσατζήδικο* (a restaurant that served only tripe) where the πατσατζής would serve bowls of πατσά. This was the traditional Greek hangover cure. I wonder if the πατσατζήδικο is a dying institution like the Greek kiosk (περίπτερο). Anyway, here is an article on the subject: https://www.gastronomos.gr/exodos/i-istoria-toy-patsa-kai-5-athinaika-patsatzidika-poy-agapame/104689/
At the end of the article, there is a list of tripe-related vocabulary.
Finally, two expressions I’ve just picked up:
κάνω τα μούτρα κάποιου πατσά = to beat the shit out of someone
βουρ στον πατσά = a very demotic way of saying Άδραξε την ημέρα or carpe diem!
*Looking online, I noticed that the preferred spelling is now πατσατζίδικο. I don’t know where I am with spelling reforms. When I started learning Modern Greek, I had the advantage of some background in Ancient Greek, which made spelling easier for me than for someone coming into the language “cold”, but the changes leave me feeling as if I’m on shaky ground. Sure, the double σσ and ω in Λισσαβώνα and Βοστώνη had no etymological justification, but if the tripe restaurateur is a πατσατζής, surely his shop should be a πατσατζήδικο? I have nothing against spelling reforms, but there is no way I will replace αυτί and αυγό with αφτί and αβγό!