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Athens

Athens's culinary record

While for the last decade Athens has been struggling with the impact of the ongoing economic crisis, which has also brought up some big questions regarding Greece’s self-identity and the country’s place within Europe, the hard times have also helped spark a process of rediscovery, with Greeks taking a new look at their own identity, their own resources and – most importantly – their own culinary traditions and heritage.

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Upcoming Athens Food Tours

On this afternoon-into-evening food tour in Plaka, we’ll explore how this ancient district comes alive as the sun sets, visiting the hidden culinary gems and out-of-the way historical sites of this otherwise touristy neighborhood.

On this tour– our own take on a classic Athens family-style Sunday – we move at a leisurely pace, enjoying the quiet streets around downtown’s normally bustling historic Monastiraki Square, as we fill up on some of its best-kept culinary secrets.

On our Keramikos food tour, visit local institutions both new and old, exploring the mix of creativity and tradition found at this laidback neighborhood’s weekly street market. From Cretan home cooking and classic northern-style pastry to souvlaki al fresco and the freshest seafood, it’s a miracle that Keramikos remains a neighborhood under the radar.

On this food tour in Plaka, we’ll explore how this ancient district shaped both the growth of modern Athens and the palette of its locals, visiting the hidden gems of this otherwise touristy neighborhood.

On this 5 1/2-hour food tour, we’ll dive into the heart of downtown Athens, itself a vibrant microcosm of the city’s rich gastronomic diversity, its ancient and modern histories, and a meeting point for culinary traditions from all across Greece.

On this afternoon food tour of Exarchia, we’ll explore this vibrant neighborhood’s roots in political activism but also what makes it home to some of the city’s best eats. This 6-hour tour includes more than a dozen essential bites, sips and stops that illustrate the history and culture of this iconic, complex and exceptionally vibrant district.

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Athens

Le Greche: Grecian (Gelato) Formula

Evi Papadopoulou is no stranger to the culinary arts. A well-regarded food journalist who has written articles on pastries and desserts in the top Greek gastronomy publications, she is also a classically trained chef. She studied at the culinary school of renowned Italian pastry chef Iginio Massari and followed that up with specialized training in making artisanal gelato at Francesco Palmieri’s prestigious laboratory in Puglia, Italy. In July of 2014, Papadopoulou opened Le Greche, a gelato parlor tucked away on Mitropoleos Street, right off Syntagma Square. The parlor itself is straight out of an Alphonse Mucha painting and has an Art Nouveau feel, with its airy, muted color palette. Since it opened, the shop has accumulated quite a cult following – and for good reason.

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Athens

To Mitato tou Psiloriti: Cretan Hut

On Crete, endowed with fertile soil and an enviable climate, devotion to the island’s culinary traditions runs deep. This is even the case for people who have family ties to Crete but did not live there themselves, like Dimitris Katakis, who runs To Mitato tou Psiloriti, a small Cretan deli in Athens. In 1950 his grandparents left Crete, despite their great love for their native island, to go to Athens for better job opportunities – the postwar era saw many Greeks move to cities or even abroad in search of a better life. Yet the flavors and traditions of Crete, one of the southernmost points in Europe and the largest island in Greece, stayed with them and were lovingly passed on to their children and grandchildren.

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Athens

Margaro: Pillar of Piraeus

Piraeus – located about 10 kilometers south of downtown Athens – is not just the largest port of Greece, but it is also among the top five most important ports in Europe. Aside from the port, Piraeus covers a large area, some of which is residential and other parts which are more industrial. Though it may seem chaotic at first glance – especially for the many visitors who arrive at the port by ferry from a lovely little island and are shocked to suddenly find themselves in a grey city – the truth is that Piraeus hides a nostalgic flair and charm that is rare to come across in cities these days.

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Athens

Diporto: Time Travel Taverna

In business since 1887, Diporto – a defiantly traditional spot in downtown Athens – has no sign and no menu. The staff doesn’t speak a word of English, and you might have to share a table with eccentric old men who look like they stepped out of a folk ballad. You will probably have to mime your order or draw it on the paper tablecloth. But if you ever wondered what it would be like to eat in a working-class Greek taverna circa 1950, read on. Diporto is located smack in the middle of what is – at least by day – one of the Athens’ most fascinating areas, home to a variety of specialized marketplaces. Varvakeios, one of the few of its kind in Europe, is the city’s largest fish and meat market, in operation since 1886. Around this enormous, chaotic market, where vendors try to outdo each other in shouting, lies Athens’ traditional center of trade, with streets devoted to specific merchandise: hardware stores and bric-a-brac on Athinas Street; spices, cheeses, kitchen equipment and plants on Evripidou and Sofokleous; doorknobs on Vissis (yes, there is a street dedicated solely to doorknobs).

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Athens

Varsos: Nostalgia, with Cream on Top

A visit to Varsos, a culinary landmark in Athens that looks much the same as it did 60 years ago, is like traveling back in time to one of the city’s grand patisseries of the 1950s. The venue, which is still in the hands of the Varsos family who originally opened it, is one of the most famous of Athens’ old-style coffeehouses and is the only one that has kept its traditional charm over the last several decades. Varsos was established in 1892 in central Athens, but it is the wonderfully old-fashioned Kifisia location, to which the patisserie moved in 1932, that has made the venue famous. At the beginning of the 20th century, Kifisia was a holiday destination for rich Athenians, and their stately summer mansions still dot this beautiful yet ever-expanding northern suburb, which is now popular with professionals, families and expats.

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Athens

Peinirli Ionias: Talking Dough

Since its name derives from the Turkish word peynir (cheese), it’s no surprise that Athens’ best peinirli (πεϊνιρλί, “with cheese”), a boat-shaped flatbread similar to pide in Turkey and khachapuri in Georgia, is usually found at old, specialized shops or eateries owned by families who originally came from Asia Minor or Pontus, the Greek name for the southern coast of the Black Sea, in the early 20th century. So when Spyros, the owner of Peinirli Ionias in Ambelokipoi, one of the most popular peinirli takeaways in downtown Athens, casually mentions that he originally hails from the Ionian island of Corfu – nowhere near Asia Minor, another name for Turkey’s Anatolia region – we are left scratching our heads. Sensing our confusion, he quickly adds that he learned the art of peinirli-making directly from the source, so to speak: his father- and mother-in-law, who both emigrated to Athens as part of the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey.

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Athens

Panegyria: Greek Raves for the Whole Family

The warm months in Greece have special meaning for most villages, particularly on the islands, as they herald the legendary panegyria. Organized by locals, these communal festivals are usually held outdoors, often in the village’s central square. They provide an opportunity for people of all ages, from young children up to elderly folks, to feast, drink and dance until the early morning hours – it’s a chance for the whole family to let loose. Considering that this tradition involves entertainment, food, booze and dancing, it’s no surprise that its observance is centuries old. The word panegyri (πανηγύρι) derives from the ancient Greek word panegyris (πανήγυρις, pan = all + agiris = meeting), whose use has been documented as early as the 7th century BC.

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Athens

Seychelles: Post-Industrial Cooking

The neighborhood of Metaxourgio in central Athens gets its name from the historic Athanasios Douroutis silk factory (metaxi means “silk”), which closed down in 1875. The former factory, which now houses the Municipal Art Gallery, was designed in 1833 by the Danish architect Hans Christian Hansen and is among the city's most important surviving neoclassical structures. The building was originally intended to be a shopping center, but because the area became an industrial zone, it inevitably attracted mostly working-class residents who were employed in the nearby factories, smaller industries or workshops.

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Athens

New Wave Retsina: A Maligned Wine's Comeback

For too long retsina has been thought of as a cheap, oxidized, overly pungent bad wine made from mediocre grapes, its poor quality disguised by an overdose of resin and exacerbated by being stored in questionable conditions in the backyards of seaside tavernas. To say the wine has an image problem is an understatement – but that may be changing. Regardless of its reputation, retsina is a true Greek original. It dates back to the Ancient Greeks, who would coat the interiors of their otherwise porous earthenware amphorae with resin to make their wine storage airtight. Wine drinkers grew to like the taste, and winemakers consequently began adding pine resin to grape must during fermentation.

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Athens

Athens’ New-School Wine Bars

The economic crisis that has plagued Greece for the past five years has led to changes on the Athenian culinary scene, including the opening of three new types of venues that seem to be reflective of the times. The first two – cupcake places and frozen yogurt shops – are imports from abroad, perhaps indicative of a population in need of something sweet, comforting and affordable. On the other hand, the third trend, wine bars, digs deep into Greece’s roots, representing a fascinating phenomenon in a country that is one of the world’s oldest wine-producing regions. In antiquity Greek wine was exported across the Mediterranean, and the winemaking tradition has remained strong through the millennia. Yet although there are numerous wineries around the country, in the modern era Greek wine has never achieved the place it deserves on the international market. Production levels are low and vintners have long been unsure of how to market abroad.

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Athens

Kriti: Cretan Comforts

It all started about six years ago, when Cretan cuisine – food from Crete, one of Greece’s largest and most famous islands – became fashionable in Athens. Suddenly, Cretan restaurants started popping up all around the city.

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It doesn’t matter how early you show up to the Black Salami Microbakery – there’s always a line. Even right at 9 a.m., when the gates have just been pulled up, tourists and locals alike are waiting for fresh, flaky sandwiches and crusty loaves of bread. Clean, sleek, and cool, with funky marbled counters like a refrigerator mosaic cake, the bakery floods with light on sunny days, illuminating a display case filled with breakfast and lunch options. This is one of a number of new spots that have popped up in the Exarchia neighborhood recently. It’s also part of a transformation the neighborhood has been seeing for some time now – one that has accelerated in the past year, as the city’s newest metro line raises questions about the pros and cons of opening a major transit station in the main square.

Evi Papadopoulou is no stranger to the culinary arts. A well-regarded food journalist who has written articles on pastries and desserts in the top Greek gastronomy publications, she is also a classically trained chef. She studied at the culinary school of renowned Italian pastry chef Iginio Massari and followed that up with specialized training in making artisanal gelato at Francesco Palmieri’s prestigious laboratory in Puglia, Italy. In July of 2014, Papadopoulou opened Le Greche, a gelato parlor tucked away on Mitropoleos Street, right off Syntagma Square. The parlor itself is straight out of an Alphonse Mucha painting and has an Art Nouveau feel, with its airy, muted color palette. Since it opened, the shop has accumulated quite a cult following – and for good reason.

Editor’s note: Carolina Doriti, our Athens bureau chief, was born in the Greek capital, where she grew up in a family with a long culinary tradition. Having studied arts management, she pursued a career as a curator but quickly set her museum work aside to follow her true passion: cooking! Since then, along with her work with CB as both a writer and tour leader, Carolina has been working as a chef, restaurant consultant and food stylist. She is also the Culinary Producer of My Greek Table, a TV series on Greek gastronomy, broadcast on PBS across the US. She has appeared on various cooking shows on Greek and Spanish TV and gives cooking classes and workshops in Athens. The Greek Islands Cookbook is her second cookbook.

Editor’s note: Carolina Doriti, our Athens bureau chief, was born in the Greek capital, where she grew up in a family with a long culinary tradition. Having studied arts management, she pursued a career as a curator but quickly set her museum work aside to follow her true passion: cooking! Since then, along with her work with CB as both a writer and tour leader, Carolina has been working as a chef, restaurant consultant and food stylist. She is also the Culinary Producer of My Greek Table, a TV series on Greek gastronomy, broadcast on PBS across the US. She has appeared on various cooking shows on Greek and Spanish TV and gives cooking classes and workshops in Athens. The Greek Islands Cookbook is her second cookbook.

The typical after-beach taverna in Greece almost always focuses on fish. You want to sit seaside, still a little salty from your swim, watching the last rays of the day’s sunshine drip into the sea. It’s certainly a beautiful image, and very typically Greek. Most of the time, a day trip to the beach does end this way, particularly for Athenians when they’re looking for an escape from the sticky heat of the city center. Trigono, a restaurant in the town of Kalyvia, makes the case for ditching post-dip fish in favor of something else: grilled meat. Tomahawk steaks, lamb ribs, long spicy sausages, even offal cuts that you wouldn’t expect to see outside of major Greek holidays.

Athens’s central and largest food market is located off of National Road, between downtown Athens and Piraeus port, in an industrial area called Rendis. It covers about 60 acres of land and was inaugurated back in 1959 when the city realized that the two existing markets of Piraeus and central Athens were not enough to cover the population’s needs. But there was also a vision of developing Rendis (which back then was an agricultural zone, with lots of farmers working the fields in the area) as the main source of food supply for the city of Athens. Moreover, the location that was picked for the market was convenient, as it is easy to access both from the north and south of Attica. For visitors today, it’s best to drive there or take a taxi, and once you approach the market, you’ll notice the huge trucks heading towards it. Larger shops selling vegetables, fruit, seafood, meat and hundreds of other food products line the entrance and wind around the main market gate.

In Greece, Easter is not just a holiday; it is a celebration of life, faith, and hope – a tradition that unites families and communities in ways that few other occasions can. It is a time of reflection, renewal, and festivity, where centuries-old customs are lovingly upheld. The journey to this sacred day reaches its final peak on Lazarus Saturday, which marks the start of the most important week in the Greek Christian calendar – Holy Week. This day, a week before Easter, holds both religious and cultural significance, setting the stage for the symbolic meaning and importance of each day of this Holy Week, culminating in Easter itself. Lazarus Saturday is also the day that the baking begins in homes across Greece.

On Easter Sunday in Greece the star of the feast is the lamb, which is often substituted with goat. In some regions (and nowadays all across the country) it’s iconically slow roasted outdoors on a large rotating spit, symbolizing the sacrifice of Christ for the salvation of humanity. This tradition of spit roast lamb is linked to customs from ancient Greece and the Jewish Passover. In many parts of Greece, tradition calls for other recipes for cooking or roasting Easter lamb. Tradition generally dictates that the whole Easter lamb must be used and consumed – including the offal and head – as the lamb here is symbolic and represents the animal sacrificed during the Resurrection of Christ, and thus serves as a tribute to the divine sacrifice.

After World War II, many Greek islanders left their homes and moved to Athens for work and a brighter future. Such was the case with Nikos and Irene Vasilas, who came to Athens from the island of Naxos during their late teenage years; Irene came from Apiranthos village and Nikos from Danakos, both mountain villages. Despite the fact they both came from the same island, the two of them met and got married in Athens, where Irene worked as a housekeeper and Nikos as a builder – or to be more precise, a “digger,” as they used to call those who specialized in digging into the hills for construction. In those post-war years, the neighborhood the couple lived in – which would eventually be named Polygono – was situated on the city’s hilly outskirts. It’s where Nikos built their home, which still stands right here.

Eating in the Greek capital is always an adventure. In 2024, our best bites spanned from small bites and snacks to drinks and full-blown feasts – there’s a perfect bite for every moment in Athens, just waiting for intrepid eaters to seek it out. The following list is something of a sensory walk through the city: you’ll find salty seafood and iced treats ideal for hot summer days, the perfect cocktail spot in the vibrant neighborhood of Neos Kosmos; creamy, traditional-style Greek yogurt; and beautiful, modern takes on traditional dishes. It’s almost too much to fit into one year – we’re excited to keep eating our way through Athens in 2025.

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Carolina

Athens Bureau Chief

Constantine

Athens Tour Leader

Gulden

Athens Tour Leader

Kyriaki (“Kiki”)

Athens Tour Leader

Sofia

Athens Tour Leader

Katia

Athens Tour Leader

Natali

Athens Tour Leader

Diana

Athens Correspondent

Johanna

Athens Correspondent

Manteau

Athens Photographer

Athens: An Eater’s Guide to the City

Part of Culinary Backstreets® “An Eater’s Guide to the City” series, this newly updated and expanded book was created with those who travel to eat in mind.

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