With three days in Athens, we revisited a few favourite tavernas and cafés from our first stay, and also found some great new-to-us places for food and drink.
A place we knew as Bougatsa Thesaloniki now seems to be called Bougatsadiko Psirri, but the delicious custard pastries, unique decor and crowded patio on Platia Iroon all remain the same. And this time, Josie was actually able to capture an excellent photo of the baker flipping a sheet of filo in the air, something that always eluded us by mere seconds three years ago.
A kafeneio (καφενεíο) is a café in Greece, but To Kafeneio in Plaka is actually more of a taverna, with a full menu of drinks and classic Greek dishes. In January 2020 we had a memorable meal indoors in their cozy “400+ years old building” and this time we enjoyed another meal outside on the patio, tucked away down a shady laneway frequented by only the odd pedestrian and oblivious motor scooter.
We also visited Platanos Taverna on tiny Diogenous Street just behind the Tower of Winds near the Roman Agora. This taverna also has a long history, dating to the early 1930s, and was frequented by many famous Greek poets and musicians, as well as international writers like Henry Miller and Patrick Leigh Fermor. It’s named after the enormous platanos (plane) tree in the courtyard, which remains today, spreading shade across their sprawling patio.
A friendly but wily cat on the patio did its very best to convince us to ignore this sign.
Traditional Greek taverna food is usually presented simply, lulling you into thinking it will be perfunctory — until you start eating and realize how incredibly delicious it is. The ubiquitous dish horta is probably the best example of this phenomenon: Boiled green leaves from weedy-looking plants with names that don’t always translate into English doesn’t sound particularly appealing, but served with sweet lemon juice (not the battery acid lemons we import in Canada) and buttery olive oil it’s ridiculously good and we order it whenever possible.
Dolmades (stuffed pickled grape leaves) come in a wider variety, so we’re never quite sure exactly what we’ll get, but they’re always good. Sometimes there’s ground meat inside, sometimes they’re vegetarian, and sometimes they have a lemony sauce on top, and sometimes they don’t, sometimes they taste more of dill, and sometimes they taste more of mint. We will eat them all.
We don’t order a lot of souvlaki because it seems a bit boring, and something we can find back home. But here the chicken is moist and tastes of actual charcoal grilling. And even the potatoes taste exceptional — like, well, potatoes, rather than packets of starch.
For breakfast on our first morning we ended up at The Picky, a café and brunch spot surrounded by trendy hotels in the Psirri district. We’d bought plain koulouria (sesame bread rings) from a traditional bakery beneath our apartment in 2020, but this place sells fancier versions, braiding them into thicker rings and putting toppings on them in the way New Yorkers dress up their bagels. It works well. We tried a savoury koulouri sandwich with olives and feta and tomatoes, as well as a sweet one with butter and jam. Excellent in combination, and with coffee and tea.
