Athens

Best Bites 2022: Athens

Eating and drinking offers a unique kind of pleasure. Even the smallest bites or sips can have immense powers, creating moments so tasty or satisfying that they can instantly lift our mood, and memories that stay with us for years to come. I call it “a blessing of the senses.” In 2022, we finally saw things falling back into place – maybe not entirely, as there are other issues the world must deal with, but it was a year to make more of these memories, travel, socialize, share again, and simply enjoy. Athens has seen record-high numbers of tourism, and the tourist season has been greatly extended compared to other pre-covid years.

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.

Athens

Fatsio: A Taste of Old Constantinople

The brown wooden door at Fatsio looks like the entry to an old house, but two small signs give a clue as to what’s inside. The first reads, “Restaurant Fatsio – Manager Georgios Fatsios, Established 1948 Constantinople by Constantinos Fatsios” and below the hours are listed simply: “Daily from 11am until 6pm”. Inside are velvet curtains, old family photos, tables set properly with well-ironed white linens and vintage dinnerware with their logo, Fatsio, printed on each plate. Everything is well-preserved and the place holds an old-school finesse and elegance that is rare to find these days in an affordable lunch spot like this. What can also be found inside is a living link to another time and place, that of Istanbul when the city still had a sizable Greek community.

Athens

O Foititis: Seafood in the Athenian Suburbs

Neo Psychiko, a suburb north of central Athens, is just a 15-minute drive from the city’s busy Syntagma central square yet feels like a world away. Residential and family-oriented, the area is greener and quieter than downtown. At its heart is Plateia Eleftherias (“Freedom Square”), a lively spot with a playground, a kiosk, cafes and restaurants – the usual you’ll find in any decent Athenian plaza. People gather here from early in the morning to late at night. One of those reliably busy all-day gathering spots is O Foititis, an assuming family-run fish restaurant that has been loyally serving locals since 2005, when resident Andreas Sfikas decided to turn his experience running a neighborhood snack bar into something more ambitious.

Athens

Building Blocks: Capers, the Briny Go-To of Greek Cuisine

They grow off of walls and rocks, on rocky hills, near the sea – and even out of chinks in the sidewalk in the center of Athens. Tangy, floral and tart, capers are a wild crop like no other. The Acropolis Hill and most other ancient monuments in central Athens are covered with crawling caper plants throughout summer. On the islands, when driving those curvy, snake-like roads, look out for capers growing under the cliffs and hanging off the side of the road. (These plants often grow huge in size!) Growing untamed all over most of Greece, capers have been making their way onto local tables for centuries. The oldest recorded evidence of capers being used in food is in the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, written c. 2150-1400 BCE.

Athens

The Perfect Spring Day: Strolling Under the Acropolis in Athens

“Ο Μάρτης πότε γελά και πότε κλαίει” – Μarch sometimes laughs and sometimes cries. So the idiom goes here, as has this year. There are many phrases like this about March in the Greek language. Most of them (like in other cultures) focus on the weather’s instability during the month, and folk tradition believes that the weather gives us a glimpse of what will come in summer. This March was unstable, to say the least: one week it was snowing, then the next the spring sun was shining, and then again back to snowy winter! One of my favorite March traditions is donning a bracelet made with red and white thread. We call it “martis” or “martia” after the month’s name, and we make it on the last day of February and wear it on March 1.

Athens

In Love Again: Punch Drunk Desserts

It was a late night in 2009 when Thanos Prunarus finished his shift at Pop, a now-shuttered bar in Athens’ historical center on the tiny Klitiou pedestrian street. He was just a few steps out the door when he spotted a “For Rent” sign taped to the front of an old, empty store. This area of Athens used to be a part of the central market, with pockets of streets specializing in selling specific categories of products like buttons, doorknobs, textiles or wool. Some of the small, ancient-seeming shops selling these goods have managed to stay open despite the big historical center development boom that’s taken place in the last decade.