Athens Cuisine

About Athens Cuisine

By the ULTIMATE Athens Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Athens’ cuisine blends deep-rooted Greek traditions with a fast-evolving modern food scene, where young chefs reinvent family recipes with local produce. This is our guide to the street food, the taverna classics, the new kitchens and the sweets and coffee of the city.

Athens cuisine

Athens’ cuisine is a lively blend of deep-rooted Greek tradition and a fast-moving modern food scene. Long loved for its unpretentious neighbourhood tavernas, the city has been transformed in recent years by a generation of chefs who reinvent the recipes handed down in their families, using the produce of Greece’s farms, islands and seas.

Street food

Street food in Athens is fast, affordable and part of the daily rhythm. Souvlaki, grilled skewers, and gyros, meat shaved from a vertical rotisserie, come wrapped in warm pitta with tomato, onion, tzatziki and chips. Koulouri, a ring of bread crusted with sesame, is sold from carts on street corners each morning. And filo pies, tyropita with cheese and spanakopita with spinach and feta, are the city’s breakfast.

Neighbourhood tavernas and confident new kitchens: the old recipes, cooked with new pride.

Taverna classics

Classic Athenian eating is communal and seasonal. Ladera, “the oily ones”, are vegetables slow-cooked in plenty of good olive oil with tomato and herbs: green beans, okra, artichokes. Moussaka layers aubergine, minced meat and béchamel; gemista are tomatoes and peppers stuffed with herbed rice and baked until soft.

Market soups

Around the Central Market (Varvakios Agora), old eateries have fed market traders for generations with hearty working soups: patsas, tripe soup, and at Easter mageiritsa, the soup of lamb offal and rice with egg and lemon. Go late at night, or very early, as the stallholders do.

The modern wave

Athens now cooks with confidence: tasting menus, fire-led kitchens and international influences. Meze has been reinvented as sharing plates with natural wine or ouzo; at Ta Karamanlidika tou Fani, in this guide, the plates celebrate the cured meats of the Karamanlides of Anatolia. Nolan, also in this guide, marries Greek produce with Japanese technique, while Ama Lachei, a taverna in an old schoolyard garden in Exarcheia, keeps home cooking at its best.

Sweets and coffee

Loukoumades are puffs of fried dough drenched in honey and dusted with cinnamon. Coffee is a ritual here: Greek coffee, brewed slowly in a small briki, traditionally over hot sand, and in summer the iced freddo espresso and freddo cappuccino that fill the city’s café terraces all day.

Where to taste it

Walk the meat and fish halls of the Central Market in the morning, eat souvlaki standing up at lunch, and keep the evening for a taverna. For our pick of the city’s restaurants, from tavernas to tasting menus, see our restaurant list.

Our advice: order a table of dishes to share, ask what is in season, and finish with loukoumades and a Greek coffee.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Athens Cuisine before you go.