When the aptly named Cleopatra Theodoulou opened her restaurant, Alexandria, in the downtown Mouseio district in 1999, she not only helped in the revival of a once posh neighborhood that had fallen on hard times – she also created a vibrant culinary link to her family’s cosmopolitan past.
Although Theodoulou was born in Athens, her parents hailed from Egypt, a country that in the early part of the 20th century was home to a large and longstanding expatriate Greek community that numbered close to 250,000. Following the 1952 Egyptian revolution and a series of other political and economic upheavals, the Greeks of Egypt left in droves, many of them returning to their ancestral homeland.
A large number of these Greeks-in-exile settled in Athens, where they tried to keep the memories of their previous life alive by creating social clubs, like the Egyptiote Nautical Club, or ENOA (Egyptiote is a term used to describe the ethnic Greek Egyptians), which have their own restaurants that cater to their members’ nostalgic and demanding palates.
Rather than a communal effort, Alexandria is Theodoulou’s individual attempt to reconnect with her family’s past. “I always knew I was different,” she says. “I was born and raised in Athens, but I was a bearer of my parents’ cosmopolitan heritage. That made me different from other kids at school, and I have to say that I wasn’t at ease with my heritage till I visited Alexandria with my parents at the age of 20. For me, that trip was like a rite of passage to adulthood – while strolling around the city’s crowded streets, the narratives of my family came alive. We visited our family home; the owners were very friendly and let us in. That visit made me proud of my family’s background.”
Although at first she worked as a French teacher, at a certain point Theodoulou and her husband Pantelis – formerly a nuclear physicist – decided to devote themselves to creating a restaurant that would celebrate that family background. “My family’s origins are from Chios, Epirus, Ikaria and Smyrna [Izmir],” Theodoulou explains. “Our daily meals in Athens had a heavy Greek influence, but during holidays and family gatherings the food was always Egyptian,” she says.
Alexandria is housed in a stately early-20th-century mansion, which was once occupied by the German high school of Athens. Once one of Athens’ most upscale areas, the neighborhood where the restaurant is located lost much of its luster as its residents moved to the suburbs over the decades, leaving behind numerous empty buildings. The district is still home to Athens’ Archeological Museum, from which the neighborhood gets its name, and numerous other visually striking buildings built in eclecticist and Art Deco styles.
The menu offers a collection of well-executed classic Egyptian dishes. Molokhia, the iconic Egyptian soup made from the minced leaves of the eponymous plant as well as chicken stock, had sweet undertones and the requisite dark green color and sticky thickness for which the soup is known. Fattoush, a salad of chopped greens and vegetables and pieces of toasted pita bread, got a zingy kick from the sumac used to dress it. The baba ghanoush had a silky texture and a distinct smoky hit, while the crispy falafel, encrusted with sesame seeds, had the delicate and aromatic flavor of fresh herbs and spices.
I was also impressed with the kofta (grilled meatballs) and kebabs, all made with top-quality minced meat and delicately flavored with spice mixes meticulously created by Theodoulou’s husband, Pantelis, the former nuclear physicist. The herb-marinated grilled octopus served with fava bean purée, in addition to being delicious, was also pure eye candy, the purée forming a nest for the octopus to nestle in and the whole thing sprinkled with finely diced tomatoes and parsley.
What makes eating at Alexandria such a pleasure goes beyond the food, though. Reaching back to restore her family’s former culinary traditions, Theodoulou has been able to recover something else, a kind of cosmpolitan joie de vivre that infuses the dining experience at Alexandria. “In fact, what I really admire of my family is their joie de vivre, a characteristic which is common to most Egyptiotes I know. Despite all the hardships that they met when they moved to Greece, they never lost their enjoyment of life,” she says.
“While in Egypt, they enjoyed life even during the Second World War, when Alexandria was bombarded. They still gathered to have parties and dance, with the sound of the bombs taking turns with the music.”
Guest contributor Nicolas Nicolaides, an Istanbul-born Greek who moved to Athens as a child, is a Ph.D. student in history at the University of Athens whose research focuses on the Karamanlılar (Greeks from Central Anatolia).
Published on October 22, 2013
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