Editor’s note: We’re sad to report that To Petalo is now closed.
To Petalo is probably the only place in Athens that offers a Sunday lunchtime buffet with homemade Greek food. It’s certainly the only all-you-can-eat brunch we know of that’s offered at the affordable price of €12, in a cozy yet slightly chaotic atmosphere that makes you feel like you’re eating in someone’s living room. And just as if you were at the house of a Greek friend, brunch at To Petalo is served in typically late fashion: Arrive before 2 p.m. and you’ll be waiting around for the food to be served.
The restaurant is located in Kypseli (meaning “hive”), a legendary Athens neighborhood located not far from Omonia and the historic city center. One of Athens’ first modern urban settlements, Kypseli was where the city’s first grand Art Deco and Bauhaus-influenced apartment buildings were constructed in the 1930s, at the same time that nearby Pedion tou Areos, Athens’ oldest public park, was being built. In the ’60s and ’70s, Kypseli was the upmarket neighborhood of choice for Athens’ fast-growing middle and upper class and likewise became the center of nightlife and the arts in the city, with theaters, bars, patisseries, outdoor cinemas and music halls that operated with great success. This all changed in the following two decades, when many of the area’s affluent residents started leaving, and immigrants, first from Africa and then Albania and the former Soviet republics, took their place. Today, Kypseli is one of the city’s most multicultural neighborhoods, struggling for a new identity amidst the remnants of a bourgeois past.
Petalo (the Greek word for “horseshoe”) functioned as a koutouki – a type of small, cramped, working-class taverna, usually with live music – until 2005, when owner Nikos Nikolaou took over. Hidden behind a glass front with red-and-white plaid curtains on a rather shabby back street, the place is almost impossible to find unless you know the address. The new owners have redecorated To Petalo with care; some of the best elements of the venue’s former self – such as the wine barrels on the wall and the big, old-fashioned stoves used for heating – have been kept, while other homey touches have been added. Red, floral wallpaper adorns some of the walls and there is a dark wood cabinet containing beautifully labeled homemade chutneys, jams and preserves in somewhat esoteric combinations, such as apricot and mastic.
Nikolaou, who is in his late forties and likes to smoke behind the counter, seems to just be one of those people who adore cooking and looking after folks. He and his wife serve authentic Greek food that they have creatively reinterpreted in a distinctly unpretentious way. Easily recognizable in their matching red-and-white striped aprons, the friendly couple are happy to explain in detail what each dish is about. Every Sunday there is a different menu (listed on the restaurant’s website and Facebook page) but the formula always remains the same: one soup, five to eight hefty starters – usually including savory pies, some type of lasagna and baked pasta – and three meat dishes.
On a typical Sunday, the food comes out around 2 p.m. and is laid out on the buffet, which has pride of place alongside a bookshelf and a wall with old family photos hanging on it, facing the open-plan kitchen. By 3:30, the place is usually packed with young couples, families whose members all have their own individual copy of the same newspaper (!), groups of pensive students, and other Athenians of all ages, all happily refilling their plates.
On our visit, we ate a thinly cut cabbage salad with a lemon dressing topped with dates – a lovely juxtaposition of sweet and sour notes. Wild boiled greens had been sautéed with feta and a bit of olive oil. We particularly loved the onion pie, in which the sweet taste of the onion nicely complemented the phyllo pastry. There was a fantastic dish of pork with leeks, and rooster cooked in the traditional way with wine, tomato and hilopites (a type of homemade, air-dried Greek noodles). But the highlight, for us, was a “wintry” moussaka served with a layer of metsovone, a semi-hard cheese from Epirus that has had Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status since 1996. The smoked, woody taste of the metsovone added the perfect twist to Greece’s most traditional dish, while the whole thing still remained light enough for us to go back for a couple more rounds.
There is only one type of dessert each Sunday and it is always on the house; the day we visited it was semolina halva. To Petalo serves halva politiko – the version of the dessert that comes from “i Poli” (the City), i.e. Istanbul – made with milk rather than olive oil, resulting in a lighter and more crumbly texture than typical Greek halva.
To Petalo is open as a normal taverna every night and has a short menu offering good value for money. But we recommend coming for the Sunday buffet, an unlimited feast of what makes this restaurant – and the neighborhood it calls home – such an authentic spot.
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