Traditional Athenian Tavernas

Everyone has a favorite taverna in Athens, be it in areas like Plaka, Pangrati, Koukaki, Exarchia, Kesariani, Gazi etc., whatever neighborhood you can name. “It’s been in the family for 100 years,” one might say. “You’ve got to go there, it has the best keftedes/saganaki/dolmadakia I’ve ever tasted!” And yes I’m sure it does but it would take me a lifetime! Of course that’s not the worst idea. I’ll just have to keep trying out tavernas and eventually have a part 2, 3, 4…

I focus on the oldest tavernas, those of 100 years or so and gradually move a little forward in time. Don’t expect to see these places ranked in any Michelin star list, but still the food is almost always delicious.

In the 1830’s after Greece got its independence and Athens became the capital of the modern Greek state, small bakalika or grocery stores would set up little tables outside where you could drink a glass of wine with a few olives and cheese. These little stores grew into food places for the working class. So the first modern tavernas were born. (In English the word “tavern” entered the language in the 1300’s meaning wine shop and gradually took on the meaning of an inn, where rooms were also offered.) The clientele at these early and mid 19th century tavernas was in stark contrast to upper class Athenians who dined in restaurants and hotels and had expensive European dishes with Bavarian wine.

At the tavernas however you most likely drank retsina, resinated wine, that was drawn from wooden barrels and you ate stews and soups and small fried fish, still today traditional taverna fare.

The first tavernas were lunch places, catering to workers, but then their hours expanded as factory and other workers wanted to get together and socialize with others after their shifts. These places were known as oinomageireia (oinos, ancient Greek for wine and mageireia, for cooked food) and the name is still often used for old and traditional tavernas, as in the sign below that mixes the old and the new. Kali orexi — bon appetit!

After 1922, tavernas became an important place where Asia minor refugees “soothed away their pain,” as expressed by Giorgos Pittas, author of the book The Athenian Taverna. Refugees brought Anatolian dishes like soutzoukakia, rissoles of ground meat cooked in a delicious tomato sauce, flavored with cumin and other spices. Music was a big element of early tavernas as well, with the influx of musicians playing violin, mandolin and accordion.

And though they started out with modest beginnings, tavernas were soon “discovered”
by intellectuals, artists, writers and students.

Let’s start our culinary journey in the Plaka, oldest and most beautiful part of the city. We’re going to walk along 2,500 year old Tripodon Street, the oldest street of Athens and in Europe. It was not just the oldest but perhaps the most beautiful, as it was lined with what were called choragic monuments of the type you see here in Lysicrates Square, and on top of the monuments were tripods, thus the name of the street.

Lysicrates, a wealthy arts patron, had this monument built in 334 BC to commemorate his sponsorship of the chorus winning first place in the dramatic contests held dedicated to the god Dionysus. The tripods were prizes given by the city to the winning chorus leader. Along Tripodon Street, which connected the Theater of Dionysus with the Agora area, nighttime torch processions were also held to honor the god. The monument, the only one that survives to this day, has a more modern history too — in 1669, it was made part of a Capuchin monastery and in the early 19th century, the infamous Lord Elgin (who helped himself to Parthenon marbles) offered to buy the monument from the monks but fortunately was turned down! And to round out the history, Lord Byron managed to stay there in the monastery before it was destroyed by Omer Pasha in the 1821 revolution.

So just imagine the street, full of monument prizes, whose name has never changed, where Socrates must have strolled along! Today Tripodon contains restaurants, souvenir stores and beautiful renovated neoclassical houses. This one, from 1851, lies still abandoned.

It’s a lovely springlike sunny day. Let’s sit down outside and have a bite under the pretty colorful flowerpots of The Kafeneio.

The Kafeneio

The taverna name comes from the original use as a cafeneio, a tradition that continues today, especially in small towns where you see only men sitting, sipping coffee, drinking and socializing. My father-in-law was a regular every day at his neighborhood cafeneio. That was his social life, where with a glass of red wine, he could sit for hours and play tavli (backgammon) to escape from my mother-in-law who stayed home. (And although he didn’t smoke, it was as if he did with all the second hand smoke he inhaled over the years.) At the cafeneio, with your wine or ouzo or raki, you’re served a plate of mezedes so you don’t drink without eating. Mezedopoleio then is another name for a taverna, where you get little dishes of starters. This taverna calls itself a “paradosiako (traditional) mezedopoleio.”

Our view looking up has changed somewhat but we still see the impressive 11th century Byzantine church of Agios Nicholas Raganas under the Acropolis.

Our pleasant pony tailed waiter Yiannis told us that the name comes from its use in the 19th century, when people stopped here for a coffee or ouzo and it was closed in the summertime because Athenians left the city. Now of course Athenians still leave in the summer, but this is the busiest time with tourism.

I took a peek inside the beautifully decorated house. It was very cozy, a great place to sit on a cold and/or rainy day.

Some factors are part of the taverna experience. Most important is sharing. All dishes go to the center and then shared on your small plate. And if there’s no serving spoon, just use your fork!

We ordered stamnagathi, a Cretan kind of horta or wild greens, kolokithokeftedes (zucchini fritters— fresh and hot, among the best I’ve tasted) and this was just wonderful, marinated trout with fava (mashed yellow split pea, served with lots of lemon and raw onions on top.) We drank the house wine of moschofilero alexandrinou from Limnos. It was a little fruity, very delicious. The bread, fresh with a hard crust and soft and flaky in the middle, is irresistible. You always eat much more bread than you should, but how can you resist mopping and sopping up all the delicious sauces!

Note two other characteristics of taverna eating in the photo above: just simple glasses, no wine glasses, and the white paper tablecloth. This makes it easy to clean the table; when you finish, presto, the waiter rolls it up into a ball and throws it out and puts another for the next customer. Not exactly ecological, but quick and efficient.

Often tavernas will have a kerasma at the end, a dessert treat. In Crete it’s common to bring raki with your dessert, but in Athens not so much. Yiannis though had a special treat for us: rakomelo, raki with warm honey, as it appears in this larger than life photo!

Across the street from the Kafeneio is the Scholarheio taverna, another popular taverna with an old history.

And down the street as Tripodon becomes Lissiou, is the Stamatopoulos taverna, which has one of the prettiest gardens around and music every evening. It began as a grocery store in 1882 by great great grandfather Stamatopoulos and opened as a taverna in 1965.

Here’s what it looks like inside:

But the oldest continuously operating taverna in the area is the taverna tou Psarra, since 1898, serving customers like Nobel prize winning poet George Seferis and George Katsimbalis , the famed Colossus of Marousi in Henry Miller’s book. It was also a favorite of Lawrence Olivier and Vivian Leigh on their travels to Greece.

This ancient looking statue on a Plaka balcony must be wondering what taverna to eat at for dinner.

The Mnisikleous steps, known as the skalakia, are a famous background in old Greek films. It looks like everyone wants to have a coffee or drink here, and see and be seen.

Platanos

We continued walking until we approached the Aerides, the Tower of the Winds at the edge of the Roman Agora and turned to the right past the Museum of Greek folk musical instruments to find Platanos, one of our favorites, where we had enjoyed a wonderful dinner there with family visiting from the U.S. last summer (See the above sign for “oinomagereio.”)

Note the Greek spelling of “TABEPNA” pronounced taverna. (The word comes from the Latin taberna meaning ‘stall’ or ‘shed’ or ‘hut’ — in ancient Greece, traders would set out their goods, farm products and wine, on makeshift stalls.)

We had some delicious staple taverna fare: dolmadakia, grape leaves stuffed with rice and herbs in avgolemono (egg lemon) sauce, gigantes, giant beans in tomato sauce, saganaki, a popular appetizer of fried cheese, and imam byaldi, a classic dish of eggplants stuffed with tomatoes, onions and spices and maybe feta, and baked. And not to forget the roast lamb and potatoes. A feast. With all these sauces and the delicious olive oil in the salad, how can you not consume kilos of bread to sop up the sauces.

At any outdoor taverna you can’t help but notice the cats waiting patiently by your chair for a handout. Sometimes you can’t resist those sweet little whiskered faces and you share some of your lamb chops, but the tavernas obviously don’t want you to do this and Platanos had this sign.

I remember fondly a dinner some years ago with the college where I worked. A member of the Karyanos family, the original Platanos owners, is an art teacher at the school and one warm evening in late spring, the faculty filled the courtyard for a lovely dinner.

Diporto

You would never run out of tavernas and restaurants in the Plaka, but we’re moving on to Varvakeios market, the central market area now near Monastiraki/Psyrri.

Across from the fruit and vegetable market is probably one of the most famous Athenian basement tavernas or koutoukia, from the Turkish word “kutuk” meaning “familiar” — places you can feel at home. The koutoukia are known for the huge wooden barrels with little taps.

Serving the workers around it since 1887, Diporto has no sign; you have to know where you”re going! There are two doors (thus the name), that are rusty and chock full of graffiti, and two sets of steep steps leading down to the basement — watch your head going down.

It’s a tiny place, 10 tables at most. The taverna steps are full of both locals and tourists alike sitting and waiting for a table to empty. The day we went was tsiknopempti (meaning ‘charcoal Thursday,’ when Greeks eat at real “meat” places, 10 days before Lent starts) and there weren’t the usual crowds. When you get a table at Diporto, the young waiter throws the paper tablecloth down, moves on quickly, and bam, practically throws down a ½ liter of white wine (without your asking) in a red copper carafe. He’s drawn the wine from the wooden barrels, and some wine spills out on the table. Actually the wine is delicious — we couldn’t ask for anything better. You could say the service is a little “brusque” — another bam! as he sets down the two taverna glasses.

As soon as we sit down, an accordion player has also descended the steps and starts playing well known songs, making the rounds of the tables.

The young assistant comes over to tell you what’s cooking that day, usually around four dishes. No menu. Their specialty is revithia, chick pea soup. It has a velvety texture and is cooked beautifully with just the right amount of lemon. We also order lahanorizo, cabbage cooked with rice and another of their trademarks, fresh sardines. And delicious crusty bread to sop up the liquid.

Poet Kostas Varnalis, who often sat at Diporto, always at the same table, here composed his well known poem Oi Moiraioi (the Ill-fated) that was later put to music by Mikis Theodorakis.

“Inside the basement of the taverna, inside the smoke and swearing, under the squealing laterna (or barrel organ) yesterday all were drinking”

(The laterna is instant nostalgia for old Athens. Today you might see and hear one on pedestrian sidewalks like main shopping street Ermou or in the Plaka.)

Some pictures of Varnalis adorn the wall, along with old newspaper clippings.

Kyr (Mr.) Mitsos, the owner in his impeccable white uniform that matches his white moustache, and his assistant are constantly on the go. This is the tiny kitchen area.

Looking down from the opposite door you can see a marble sink, and there the assistant turned on the water and was washing glasses at record speed. I guess they keep running out of glasses with the continual high turnover; every time someone gets up from a table, another is ready to sit down. And if you’re alone, you most likely will be seated with someone else. 

Its not really a place to linger, because of the usual lines waiting on both steps. You eat the tasty prepared food, drink your wine, listen to the conversations nearby (next to us a student was telling her group of four what Karl Marx really meant to say) and you feel like you’re part of the history of the city. Imagine 150 years of workers’ feet trampling down these steep stairs for a quick lunch, eating pretty much what we’re eating today. You pay the assistant or Mitsos, an amazingly reasonable price and you’re on your way, up the steps again to the sidewalk.

Feeling the historical importance of Diporto, I was sad to read a report recently that the taverna had been sold to some foreign investor, who plans to renovate the upper building that’s been untouched for over a century and close Diporto within a year or two. But about a week after that appeared, Mitsos was quoted as saying that was fake news! I’m glad to hear it, but I’m worried that gentrification is an inevitable trend. So hurry and experience the taverna while it’s there.

The upper building and the one next to it, are from the 1850’s.

The meat and fish markets in Varvakeio central market are fun to walk around in and there are a number of small restaurants there, some with live music.

But the most popular is the Oinomagereio Ipirou, Epirus Tavern, in the heart of the meat market (not for the faint of heart), dating back to 1898. The owner must be or the original owner must have been from Epirus, the northwest region of Greece, The taverna has huge bins of soup, stews and other cooked food in the front with their specialty ‘patsas,’ or tripe soup. The place opens actually at 6:30 am (!) not only to serve market workers but traditionally its clientele at that hour were people staying all night at bouzoukia drinking (probably fewer these days) and wanted something like patsas to calm their stomach.

Klimataria

Let’s continue our walk around that area of downtown Athens, and continue to Plateia Theatrou, so called because of the 1^st closed theatre in the 19^th century. Here we find Klimataria, opened as a oinomageirio in 1927, but before that, it was used as a cafeneio (as we’ve seen many places were) for church events. In the sign it’s called a wine restaurant.

In addition to the few plates offered, there was always plenty of wine from the barrels and you were kept warm with a wood stove. At Klimataria In the 40’s and 50’s rembetika musicians/composers Markos Vamvakaris and Giorgos Papaoiannou played there.

When we went during Carnival, we got there at 9 and were told the music didn’t start until 11, so we set records in how slowly we could eat, chewed everything a hundred times and took tiny sips of wine. Here we had finally finished as the music started.

Why the name ‘klimataria’? Some restaurants might be named for the type of shade provided in the garden. Here, “klimataria” are the grape vines in the pretty courtyard, just as “platanos” in the Plaka refers to the shade of the plane tree.

Leaving Plateia Theatrou, we walk into the vibrant neighborhood of Psyrri to take a peek at Avli, where we ate several years ago. (see City walks, Monastiraki and Psyrri)

.Avli

When we ate at Avli, meaning “courtyard,” the place filled up within ten minutes after it opened. With its blue shutters and white stucco, it’s in the middle of a complex of two-room houses and workshops, all facing a common courtyard. About 40 to 50 years ago, the place served mostly coffee there to shop owners.

Popular Greek music plays from a radio at a discreet volume so you can talk.  Avli is a typical mezedopoleio. With a variety of mezes, you have a meal – our table was filled with salad, tzatziki, fried potatoes and tomatokeftedes, real keftedes (meatballs – their specialty), melitzanosalata (aubergine salad) and chicken tigania (pieces sautéed in a kind of sweet sour sauce) and the house red wine.

Oinomageirio Trifylli

If you’re looking for the name ‘trifylli,’ you won’t find it, only the three leaf clover in the sign.

This clover of course is the symbol of the Greek sport team Panathinaikos. Trifylli, near Leoforos Alexandras, is not a place you would just stumble on unless you’re a soccer fan and go to the stadium to watch a game, and you happen to be near Gate 13. And that’s how it got its start 62 years ago when kyria (Mrs.) Koula started cooking to support the family income, by grilling meat for hungry soccer fans.

In contrast to Diporto which has found its way into all the guidebooks, Trifylli is pretty much unknown to tourists.

Turning the heavy (!) door handle, you find yourself immediately in a tiny room and beyond it another small room with super bright green walls! (Panathinaikos color) and huge barrels.

Anna the waitress asks if we’re familiar with the food they serve, assuming that most customers are regulars. As with Diporto, there’s no menu and only about four different dishes. Besides a tomato and cucumber salad with sweet onions, we go for their specialty, keftedes (as with Avli) but these are amazing. Anna brings them to the table as soon as they’re fried; they’re crispy and fragrant with mint. The lahanodolmades in a light avgolemono sauce just melt in your mouth. One plate of them has us wanting more!

So we order their last dish, the bakaliaro with skordalia (fried cod with garlicky dip). This is a popular taverna fare, especially eaten on the 25th of March, Greek independence day. The skordalia is made with a base of potato or sometimes day old bread, and often crushed nuts are added too. I’m always a little wary of this dish — but this was perfect — the batter for frying the fish was light and the skordalia tasty without knocking your socks off with garlic.

(Some tavernas advertise bakaliaro and skordalia even as part of their name, like the Saita, a popular koutouki in the Plaka.)

Back to Trifylli where one other group of people sat in our little room. The walls of course were full of Panathanikos paraphernalia.

I think if the place gets too busy, it’s better to sit in the front room away from the green room and the little kitchen. There’s also a small outdoor area. At the end, Anna brought us a simple kerasma of apples cut up with cinnamon and sugar. Trifylli was surely a pleasant surprise with the quality of food and worth exploring, whether you’re a Panathinaikos fan or not!

Oikonomou

We’re moving now to the area of Petralona that’s clearly divided by the train tracks between Kato (lower) Petralona and Ano (Upper). Kato is more working class, gritty, a little bit urban jungle while Ano, where the taverna Oikonomou is found, is near the back of Mt. Filopappou and has old style stone family houses, open spaces and streets with olive and lemon trees. The street where Oikonomou is found, Troon Str. was recently included on the list of “one of the world’s coolest streets” from TimeOut magazine.

It was a Monday, fairly warm and had just opened for the evening. It was 7:30, early by dinner eating out standards, but little by little, tables filled up, so I imagine on the weekend it would be hard to find a table, unless you reserved.

In its trademark yellow (like Klimataria) in a neoclassical building from 1918 where Nikos Oikonomou lived, he turned it into a small restaurant with one pot cooking on the stove and called it Zephyros (also the name of a historic open air cinema nearby).

His son took the place over over in 1952 and made it a hasapotaverna, a combined taverna and butcher’s shop, until 1972, when it became solely a mayeireio. Kostas Diamandis who bought it in 2002, and recently sold it, supposedly wanted to change the menu, but there was such an outcry that he was forced to keep it the same as it always was!

The new owners thought of adding fried potatoes (whoever heard of a taverna without fried potatoes?) but it seems that would betray their principles, with their specialties focused on cooked ladera favorites (using oil) like fricassee, soutzoukakia, rabbit stew and vegetable stews like okra. We can’t resist getting ‘imam,’ as they call it, but it’s really more of a slow cooked aubergine stew. We get horta and kokoras krassato, rooster in wine sauce (coq au vin) with large tubed spaghetti. Stin iyeia sas! To your health!

Oikonomou has boasted some famous regular customers like artist Alekos Fasionos, whose drawings and paintings decorate the walls.

And writer Kostis Papageorgis, who got the taverna to build shelves to hold his books and some of his other favorites. Our waitress Eleni was as proud as could be that he used to come here.

She asked if we wanted yogurt with homemade kythoni (quince) Did we ever! A delicious kerasma for the end of the meal.

Vyrinis

Vyrinis, a 3rd generation taverna going back 80 years, and a Pangrati landmark, lies behind the historical Kallimarmaro stadium, the only stadium in the world built entirely of marble. A pleasant area to walk around, like this street near the taverna with its palm trees:

This area of Pangrati, Metz, has always attracted writers and artists. My friend Karen, who menrioned Vyrinis to me, has a great story about this. Her husband remembers as a 5 year old kid sleeping under the barrels about 75 years ago or so while his poet father and his friends, would stand up and recite their verses to each other!

Now on this warm spring afternoon, it was quiet outside in their courtyard where we sat down.

What to order, what to order…we had some great dishes: a kalokairino (summer) salad with all fresh ingredients of cherry tomatoes, baby roka, lola, spinach, Domokou soft cheese and raisins in a sweet sour sauce. Creamy tzatziki with dill and grated carrot that gave it a slightly sweet taste. Imam byaldi cooked just right, not too heavy on the onions, delicious tomato sauce, and one of their specialties, lamb lathorigani, in oil and oregano.

Vyrinis has evolved from classic taverna fare to adding new touches, and definitely a place to linger — we were there for a good two hours and at the end, our waiter Alexandros brought us two sorbets. They had a wonderful smell: basil! What a perfect way to end the meal.

Kitsoulas

Although it’s a little out of the way in relation to downtown Athens, I had to include Kitsoulas, another legendary taverna, this one outside the city in the northern suburbs, in Halandri. It’s a fun place — Mr. Kitsoulas, who’s gotten on in years, seems to really care that he has satisfied customers. He goes from table to table, telling jokes, sometimes singing and inviting others to join in. Like Diporto, Kitsoulas is a lunch place and closes by 6 pm, but if you go after 3, they’ve probably run out of food way before that. The heavenly lahanodolmades are such a popular dish that they go soon after the place opens. There they are, to the left. Note the fava with onions, horiatiki salata with feta, horta, roast chicken with potatoes, and the heavenly dish on the right is lamb fricassee, lamb cooked in a stew with greens and pearl onions. Of course the kitchen is much bigger than other places that I’ve mentioned.

I think Kitsoulas has its fanatic regulars and you can see why. Once you go, you get hooked on it. Besides the sitting down customers, there’s always a long line for takeout.

As with most tavernas, the walls are decorated with paintings, drawings, old memorabilia, often the owner’s taste.

Home cooked stews are a delicious part of the traditional taverna experience, but you know, sometimes there’s nothing better than a souvlaki, a kebab or a gyro (pronounced yee ro) that you can find just about everywhere. A guilty pleasure for sure! At Monastiraki, there’s the famous Bairaktaris taverna, with a sign saying from 1879 (not to be confused with the Bairaktaris Eatery) and next door, Thanassis. Both places are always packed and supposed to be among the best in souvlaki. We get a kebab from Thanassis.

Papagiannis

At Papagiannis, our favorite takeout in the Goudi area, it’s hard to say what’s more wonderful: is it dishes like lamb giovetsi, lamb baked with orzo pasta, is it pastitsio, or is it.fish baked with potatoes. For takeout you select what you want from the dishes on the counter.

The interior looks like they haven’t changed from 1967 with the low wooden ceilings and bright lights.

As we’re regulars ordering takeout here, Kyrios Nikos, one of the servers, often gives us a complimentary dessert of halvah, made of semolina, that he sprinkles with cinnamon.

So many places we still want to try: the list is endless and I haven’t even mentioned those in Pireaus, which has some great old historical tavernas.

I hope I’ve made you hungry! Long live simple Greek food which is alive and well and delicious. For reasonable prices, you can eat and drink wonderfully in Athens; ask two very contented diners!

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Sherri Moshman Paganos is a writer and former educator, inspired by her life in Athens, where she and her husband are happily retired and enjoying their travels in Greece and abroad. You can check out her writing — fiction, non-fiction, poetry and articles here.