Leloudas: Living Legend

Few places remain in Athens with the charm of Leloudas – hidden between factories in Votanikos, the restaurant is located in an area you would not normally visit for any other reason. A few tables are set outside on the narrow sidewalk with a view of the wall of the factory across the street. Inside, old wooden barrels are lined up on the left; on the right is an old mural of a boat at sea, reminding us that this place was initially set up by islanders. Old family photos decorate the walls. They are stunning and feel like they could be part of a museum collection – you can spend hours gazing at them, trying to imagine what life was like in this Athenian neighborhood a century ago. Across from our table – a large round table made of a wooden barrel – is an old hand-painted grey wooden door. The owner, Dimitris, points at it and then he opens the door, and we take a glimpse at a dark square room lined with barrels. “That’s our old home. Now it is where I age my wines!” he says, smiling proudly.

The story of Leloudas began in the late 1920s, when the first Dimitris Leloudas left his hometown on the island of Kythnos. Like so many other islanders at the time who were in search of a brighter future, he decided to move to Athens. He settled in the then-rural area called Votanikos, where his brother-in-law owned a small grocery store business. During the day he completed his naval service; in the afternoons he helped his brother-in-law at the store.

The whole area, which is located about three kilometers east of central Athens on the way to Piraeus port, used to be agricultural – mostly fields and grazing cattle. Due to the fact that the central fruit and vegetable market was located on Pireos street near the Keramikos neighborhood, the market was supplied daily by the nearby fields. Many of the residents in the area at that time were Greek refugees from Asia Minor who arrived in Athens in the early 1920s. Most people who lived in the area either owned farms or simply worked in the fields and farms.

In 1932 Dimitris married Maria, who also came from the island of Kythnos, and with his savings he bought the grocery store from his brother-in-law. The store was quite spacious and as soon as Dimitris and his wife took over, they moved in and made their home in a cellar-like space within the shop. Dimitris started making his own wine with grapes sourced from Mesogia, a historic wine region near the Athens airport. He stored his wine in wooden barrels which were lined within the shop and he was selling it to his customers by the liter. Along with the wine they sold all the basics in bulk; from bread and cheese to soap and cigarettes.

Throughout the years the shop stayed open, even during World War II when Dimitris was away at the warfront. During this time, Maria ran the place while looking after her two young children. When the war was over and with a third son in tow, Maria was cooking daily to feed her family. Hungry passersby would stop at the shop to buy some olives or wine, and, smelling the home-cooked food, would ask if they could order a portion. Maria started gradually cooking larger quantities and as the days went by, she sold more and more food, mostly to people from around the neighborhood. Leloudas – as the grocery store was called – had turned into an eatery as well.

For a couple more decades Leloudas remained a grocery store-restaurant hybrid – a very common combination in most parts of Greece back in the day. In 1950, the area started to change. The first industrial zone was built, home to the Asty ice-cream factory, and several other factories – big and small – followed, gradually turning the area into a commercial hub. The needs of the local residents started changing as well. With the factories came many workers and their families, more mouths had to be fed, and by 1960, the Leloudas grocery store and particularly the eatery were thriving. Of Dimitris and Maria’s three sons, the most devoted to the shop was Vassilis, the middle son, who took over the shop in 1970 when he got married. After four decades, Vassilis’s parents retired and moved out of the store into their new home in a nearby suburb called Egaleo.

Leloudas was now run by Vassilis and his wife Efrosyni, who became the heart of the kitchen. In 1972 their son was born, named after his grandfather, Dimitris Leloudas. They all lived in the store together just like the grandparents had until Dimitris was about five. The three moved into an apartment while the room they once used to share became a proper cellar where they still age their wines. Leloudas operated as it always had until 1982, when Vassilis and Efrosyni decided to close the grocery store and focus on the eatery. (Though they still sold their house wine, and cheese from Kythnos island.)

Efrosyni prepared humble daily dishes – not too many options, but with a repeated scheduled menu: on Mondays she made fasolada, the classic Greek-style white bean soup; on Wednesdays it was chickpea soup; most days she cooked lamb stew with makaronia (spaghetti); twice a week she fried her legendary meatballs and, on the weekends, she served boiled lamb heads, baked giant beans, and fried salted cod with skordalia (a traditional garlic dipping sauce) – a dish that became their trademark. Their regular customers, who were mostly men who worked in the surrounding factories, would often go to Leloudas for the wine. They would order food to go along as is the custom – but mostly small things to share and nibble on while they drank, like salad, thermiotiko cheese from Kythnos island, lamb head, or boiled tongue.

Efrosyni cooked at Leloudas for 35 years, until she passed away in 2005. Her portrait hangs high on the wall in front of the semi-open kitchen. Her son Dimitris, who currently runs Leloudas, cannot forget his mother’s devotion to the taverna and her lovely cooking. As part of the third generation to run the eatery, he remembers every little story that has taken place here; every single dish that has ever been cooked. Dimitris records the changing eating habits over the years: “Things started changing again a lot during the 1990s,” he notes. “Greeks stopped eating dishes like lamb head, so we had to slightly adjust the menu.”

After his mother’s death, the kitchen was passed on to Anna, his partner. “The eatery became what it is today largely due to Anna, who tried to slightly upgrade the menu, without ruining its historical and rustic ambience,” Dimitris states, almost in tears, as Anna has been seriously ill over the past year.

Dimitris himself is an unstoppable force. In addition to working daily at Leloudas – where he literally does it all, from taking orders and serving customers to helping in the kitchen, managing the finances, placing orders, making the wine – after two generations of self-taught winemakers in the family, Dimitris decided to properly study the subject. In 2013 he got his sommelier diploma, in 2014 he started studying food and beverage technology, and in 2018 he entered university in the city of Drama (northern Greece) for a degree in Oenology which he still hasn’t completed but soon hopes to. He is eternally grateful to his father and grandfather for passing over to him all the hands-on winemaking knowledge and all the secrets about traditional wine barrels and how to handle them. We tasted his brand-new rosé from this years’ harvest, and soon his white wine will be ready as well. He has also done a barrel of Retsina which he plans to bottle and label – a request of his devoted customers. The red wine that he plans to make is going to be an anniversary special dedicated to his mother, bottled, numbered and labelled with her name.

“Just like I am the third generation of running Leloudas, we also have three generations of regular clients coming to the eatery. So, our relationship with most of them is naturally quite personal as I have known the families for decades,” Dimitris says.

These days, Leloudas is still open daily and only for lunch. The regulars still include a lot of factory workers from nearby, but also people who will frequently drive there for the experience.

The food is simple and the menu is small and humble. Among their most famous dishes is still the fried salted cod with skordalia sauce. Their hand-cut fried potatoes are award winning, and so are the beautiful tsakistes green olives – firm and slightly bitter as they should be. The baked giant beans with ouzo are simple and delicious and the crispy fried meatballs with chopped fresh mint are actually made from scratch with minced meat they cut themselves in the kitchen. The tenderly cooked (boiled) tongue and beef cheeks dressed in extra olive oil are a popular meze dish to share for the wine drinkers! On the menu there’s a dish called “the dish of the poor.” This is an old recipe people made back in the day when they could not afford to make a proper moussaka, so instead they used some of the basic ingredients to make what they used to call a pseftomoussaka (“pseudo-moussaka”). In the dish, fried potatoes serve as the base, minced meat cooked in a spiced tomato sauce is spooned on top and then sprinkled with grated dried mizithra cheese (a traditional Greek cheese often used on pasta dishes). Leloudas also prepares daily specials and now provides delivery and takeout to the nearby area.

Dimitris starts serving food as early as 11:30 a.m. – very rare for Greek standards, but factory workers start work early in the morning and tend to have an early lunch. The place gets very busy after 1 p.m. and stays busy until about 6 p.m. when it closes. Sundays are particularly popular but there are several tables indoors, a few outdoors, and they do their best to accommodate everyone, even without a reservation.

Published on January 20, 2023

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