Nea Diagonios

When you walk into this new restaurant in the heart of Kolonaki on Lykavitou Street, the first thing that you feel is how perfectly suited to the neighborhood it is. A well-lit, well-designed, perfectly urban restaurant that takes up three whole floors and yet exudes an air of stately, modern calm. The designers knew their tans and beiges and wood finishes, turning each of the three floors here into comfortable, simple spaces faintly reminiscent of the browns and beiges on a meat lover’s plate (the specialty here is flesh!). They succeeded, with such a pared down color palette, to design a space that is conservative without seeming boring.

Nea Diagonios is a well-known psistaria (grill place) in Thessaloniki to which I have not been but have read and heard about. All good things. From what we tasted, the kitchen team has also succeeded in bringing to the capital a menu built on classics that isn’t in the least bring or dull. Standards like Horiatiki, boiled vegetable salad, and simple lettuce salad are all here, in generous portions, but so are a few more interesting salads, all of which come in exuberantly large portions, wisely so, to counter the kreatofageia that follows. The politiki salad is as colorful as a Christmas tree, glistening with olive oil and sparkling with colored peppers. We liked the use of the smoked pork from Evritania instead of traditional bacon in the spinach salad. On the dip front, out of curiosity, we ordered the “paprika,” which was not what I anticipated. It was stodgy and gummy as if from overworked starch, and flat in flavor despite the hot pepper. It is also huge: it comes served heaped into a large dish, way too much as a meze.
By contrast, the grilled hot pepper, indeed hot, were the epitome of lean, pure, perfection to this spice-loving palate. The portion sizes are actually an issue here; they are actually too big! The grilled haloumi, for example, is a plate of three massive pieces of cheeses, topped with large roasted tomatoes, and, as if that’s not enough, strips of grilled pork loin as…garnish! The hand-cut fried potatoes are good. A few things seemed oddly out of place, like the sauteed veal liver with imported French organic rhubarb marmalade. Why?

I had to try the two specialties that put Nea Diagonios on the map to begin with, t hey gyro and the soutzoukakia and both were excellent. The gyro, a plate of crisp, grilled pork bits with a healthy sized garnish of raw onions and parsley, was excellent. The meat was beautifully browned, crisp without being dry, tender without being fatty. The soutzoukakia, four to a plate, are not the smyrneika kind, but instead sauceless, better so that the taste of the meat itself comes through. They were very good.

We weren’t crazy about the vanilla-flavored kazan tipi with which we ended our meal here, but overall, we liked Nea Diagonios for what it is: a self-respsecting, if a little excessive, meat haven, with Macedonia-sized portions, a lean urban look, and a price range that makes the every well-sated customer feel like a winner.

Cuisine: Grilled meat in all its glory with great accompaniments, Greek classics

Athens Area: Kolonaki, downtown

Decor: Contemporary, sleek, urban chic

Wine List: Good

Prices 25-40 euro per person

Service: good and attentive

Address: 14 Lykavitou str., Kolonaki, Athens, Tel: 210 361 7821