Where to Eat in Athens
New Age Greek Restaurants in Athens
Athens has always eaten well, in the taverna, the grill, the corner ouzeri with a handwritten menu. Over the past few years a different kind of Greek restaurant has taken hold, and it is the one to seek out now. Not fine dining, not fusion. It is what happens when cooks who trained in good kitchens go back to the food they grew up on and make it with better ingredients and more thought.
Most of these places cook over wood and charcoal, change the menu when the market changes, and pour Greek wine with real conviction. Many slide into something closer to a bar late in the evening. The line between dinner and a night out in Athens was always thin, and here it more or less disappears.
What follows is where we send people who want to eat the way the city actually eats right now. Book ahead where you can. The good tables go fast.
Pharaoh, Exarchia
One of the most talked-about tables in the city, and it lives up to the noise. Everything is cooked over wood and charcoal, with no gas in the building, in a raw concrete room lined with firewood and a wall of vinyl. Order the chestnut stew, the tarama with bottarga, the slow-cooked lamb with pasta, and end with galaktoboureko. After eleven the kitchen winds down and the room becomes a wine bar, sometimes a dance floor, with a 400-bottle Greek cellar to get through. Book ahead.
ATENO, Central Athens, Aiolou Street
Lunch or dinner here is eaten inside what is effectively a Greek salumeria. ATENO fills a restored 1831 building on Aiolou, in the old wholesale district, half restaurant and half deli, and almost everything on your plate is for sale downstairs to take home: the cold cuts from rare Greek breeds, the cheeses, the Santorini fava, the honey. The cooking is by Nikos Karathanos, who won a Michelin star at twenty-seven and has come back to do something looser and produce-driven, modern Greek that teases the classics. The Greek salad is rebuilt as a stuffed tomato with feta cream, cucumber and a coal-toasted rusk, the braised rooster comes with calamari and trahana foam, and there is a take on lentils with feta and tomato you will think about later. Sit at a pavement table on pedestrian Aiolou, or downstairs by the cured-meat counter for the full salumeria feel.
Taverna ton Filon, Kolonos
Worth the taxi to a residential corner of Kolonos, well away from anywhere tourists go. A 1958 taverna brought back to life, white tablecloths, dim light, an open kitchen and a menu that changes by the day. Order the taramosalata first, then the tyrokafteri with hot peppers and the gigantes with greens and cheese. Forty-odd Greek wines, every one available by the glass. Plenty of Athenians will tell you it is the best taverna in the city right now.
Manari, Agioi Theodoroi Square, Central Athens
Aris Vezene’s grill, and the name matters here, because this is the Athenian meat taverna done properly. Whole-animal butchery, daily specials, a counter looking onto the fire and a courtyard for warmer nights. Get the lamb chops, the tomato salad cut thick with capers, the spicy tyrokafteri and the homemade pasta in beef jus. Leave room for the caramelised brioche with Aegina pistachio and milk ice cream. It fills up, so reserve.
Pappu, Peristeri, West Athens
Far out in the back streets of Peristeri, west of anywhere a visitor usually goes, you will find some of the most assured cooking in the city. The room is minimal and industrial, but the place to sit is the back garden, a leafy urban courtyard that is the whole reason to come on a warm night. The kitchen is built around meat and does it brilliantly: a flawless beef tartare, tender mutton, a cacio e pepe that arrives with meat and somehow works, alongside the jalapeño smashed tirokafteri, the beets with nuts and a tiramisu to finish. A deep Greek wine list, and gentle prices for what you are getting. Go hungry, take the garden, stay late.
Akra, Pangrati, Proskopon Square
Tiny wine bar sharing a wall with the Dough pizzeria next door. Your food order comes through a little window between the two kitchens. Compact list of natural Greek wines, vinyl on weekends. Not the place for a serious tasting, very much the place for a Friday night.
Plyta, Pangrati, Plateia Plyta
A neighbourhood square in Pangrati with a kitchen run by some of the best cooks in the city, doing a modern take on the old kafeneio over wood and charcoal. Mosaic floors, marble tables, an open steel kitchen breathing over the flames. The rooster pilaf is as good as it gets in Athens, the slow-cooked goat over fried potatoes is the dish people come back for, and the pistachio kataifi closes it perfectly. Sunday lunch here is a tradition worth borrowing.
Linou Soumpasis & Co, Psyrri
A new-age taverna in a former candle shop on a Psyrri side street, candles still lit around the room, with a small garden out back under a lemon tree. The cooking is Greek with a light twist: tuna and raw fish with vegetables, a Greek salad made with brie, cod with anchovies and potatoes, taramosalata with warm flatbread. The wine list is all Greek. A long courtyard lunch is the way to do it.
Dodeka Piata, Koukaki
Twelve plates, as the name says, built for sharing. A modern tavern in Koukaki with mosaic floors, white linen and pavement tables under the sour orange trees in summer. Start with the smoked yoghurt with cucumber and dill, the warm cheese curd with roasted Florina peppers, and the tomato with grated feta and capers, alongside the house sourdough. There is now a second branch near Syntagma, but the Koukaki original is the one to book.
Stou Lou, Kerameikos
A wine restaurant in a dark, low-key corner of Kerameikos, with an underground cellar of more than 250 labels and lamps overhead made from cut wine bottles. The cooking is Greek and rustic, classic dishes given a contemporary turn, food made to keep a bottle company. Greek records on the speakers and an unhurried, personal feel. Go for a long evening over wine.
Seramiko, Kerameikos
Modern Greek cooking in Kerameikos with a strong Greek wine list and its own microbrewery. The sirloin with carob honey and truffle, the hilopites with veal cheeks and the grilled talagani with marmalade are the standouts, with sourdough and desserts made in house. A late-night favourite that stays honest and refined.
Kapani, Metaxourgeio
A taste of Northern Greece in Metaxourgeio, built around the cooking of Florina. Ajvar pepper spread, pickles, Prespes bean soup, slow-cooked veal, fire-grilled pork belly, doughs baked in the wood oven and cheeses from across the country displayed in a glass case. Natural wines, some from their own production. A small deli is attached, so you can take the cheese and preserves home.
Zigoala, Central Athens
Near Omonia and the Varvakios Market
A late-night room on near-empty Lykourgou Street, dressed like an old Greek film: burgundy leather chairs, round warm lamps, a snow-covered mountain on the wall and an open kitchen. The cooking is Greek rooted in memory, lightly shifted by the Eastern Mediterranean, by Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon, so familiar dishes arrive a little changed, with more lemon in the dolmadakia and cardamom in the chicken. Nothing is wasted: broths from pork trotters, hilopites simmered in stock, cracklings folded back in at the end. The music runs from rebetiko to jazz-funk, the wines are Greek and from small producers. Go late, order wide and stay a while.
September 18, Central Athens
Stoa Kairi, by the Varvakios Market
An all-day place on a quiet pedestrian arcade steps from the central market, open from breakfast until late and not quite café nor restaurant. The kitchen keeps it short and seasonal, around ten plates in the morning and ten more from lunch onward, pared back in the Nordic way and built from small Greek producers. Breakfast skips the usual brunch formulas, and by evening it turns into a few plates and a glass of wine. Good coffee, a smart cocktail list. The menu shifts often, so go with whatever they are cooking that week.
Tsiftis, Ilisia
A gastro taverna on a calm, plane-lined pedestrian street in Ilisia, with tables set out among herb planters and chairs strung with coloured cord. The menu is short and seasonal, around fifteen plates built on whatever the market has that week, so it turns over with the year. Refined Greek comfort food: taramosalata with warm sourdough, grilled beetroot with feta on charred bread, fried Prespes giant beans, rooster with wild mushrooms and Naxos graviera in the colder months. Finish with the twisted orange pie. Plates are made for sharing, the Greek wine list runs deep and off the beaten track.
Topa, Kypseli, Fokionos Negri
A reinvented kafeneio on the tree-lined Fokionos Negri in Kypseli, where Crete meets the Basque Country. Small sharing plates and pintxos, vermouth, raki and very good coffee. No reservations and no stress, open from morning until late. Turn up, put your name down and settle in.
