Why We Named It Parea + Co.
The artwork was on the wall of my hotel room in Greece. The word landed because I recognized it — not as a definition but as a feeling I'd been having for years without language for it.
The artwork was on the wall of my hotel room in Greece. It wasn't a painting, just a simple framed print. One word in large type, with its definition underneath.
Parea.
It's a Greek word that's difficult to translate directly into English. You'll often see it described as a group of friends or a gathering, but it's more than that. It's the kind of evening when dinner lasts for hours, the conversation wanders, another bottle of wine gets opened, and nobody is in a hurry to leave. It's the feeling of being somewhere new and settling in so completely that you forget to think about anything else.
I remember standing in front of that print for a while. I liked the word, but I think I liked the feeling behind it even more.
I was traveling with a girlfriend on a trip that had been wonderfully unhurried. We'd spent the week wandering, eating well, and lingering over meals long after we'd finished eating. We weren't trying to fit everything in or get anywhere in particular. We were just enjoying being there.
We'd experienced parea without really knowing what to call it. I took a picture of the print and brought it home with me.
A few months later, I met my partner.
He has celiac disease, and I began to understand how much that could change the experience of traveling. Over the years, he'd learned to be careful about where he ate, what questions to ask, and how much he could trust the answers. Even when a restaurant looked wonderful, there was always the question of whether the food would actually be safe. And even when people meant well, things didn't always go as planned.
On one of our first dates, he said something that stuck with me. He said it casually, as though it were simply a fact of life.
I guess you don't travel for the food, though.
I thought about that print in Greece.
Food had always been one of my favorite parts of traveling. I love the way a meal can tell you something about a place, how a market or a neighborhood restaurant can become the highlight of a trip, and how some of the best evenings happen when nobody is watching the time.
But for my partner, enjoying a meal wasn't always that simple. There were questions to ask, kitchens to assess, and decisions to make before he could relax. The very thing I loved about eating abroad was something he often had to work around.
I started thinking about what it would take to change that. What if the research happened before the trip? What if the accommodations were carefully vetted, the restaurants had been contacted, and the important questions had already been answered? What if he could sit down at a table somewhere new without having to figure everything out from scratch?
What if he could enjoy the meal, too?
That's where the idea for Parea + Co. began to take shape.
The name made sense in a way that went beyond liking a Greek word. Parea described the experience I wanted to help make possible: the long meal, the easy conversation, the feeling of being somewhere new without having to spend the evening managing all the things that could go wrong.
It wasn't about making travel completely risk-free or promising that every experience would be perfect. It was about doing the work ahead of time so that travelers with celiac disease could make more informed decisions and spend less of their trip worrying about food.
I still think about the fact that I found the word before I knew what I would eventually do with it. At the time, it was just a print on a hotel room wall in Greece. I took a picture because the word resonated with me, long before I had any idea how much it would come to mean.
Then I met someone who helped me see it differently.
Today, that idea is at the heart of Parea + Co. The research matters. The questions we ask and the places we recommend matter. All of that work is what helps make a more relaxed, enjoyable trip possible.
But the research isn't the reason for the work. The reason is what happens afterward: sitting down to dinner in a city you've never visited, enjoying the food, getting caught up in conversation, and realizing you haven't spent the entire evening worrying about what's on your plate.
That's the experience I want more travelers to have. It's what I had in mind when I named the business Parea, and it's what we're working toward every time we plan a trip.
- Parea is a Greek word with no clean English translation — it describes the quality of presence that happens when a meal stretches past what anyone planned, the conversation finds its own rhythm, and no one wants to leave.
- It is not a word for a group of people. It is a word for a particular feeling — being exactly where you are supposed to be, with no part of your attention anywhere else.
- The word came before the brand — encountered on a trip to Greece, recognized immediately as something already familiar, carried home without knowing yet what it was for.
- For a celiac traveler, that feeling requires preparation that other travelers don't have to do. The research done in advance is what allows the evening to be fully itself.
- The preparation disappears. The meal remains. That is parea. That is what Parea + Co. is built to make possible.
