Almyra

We were looking for a garden and a menu that was more fish than meat, without having to trek out to the seaside on one of the last Saturday nights of the summer. So, we settled on a place I had not visited in many, many years: Almyra, which means salt of the sea in Greek.

Like the name implies, the specialty here are fruits of the sea, with classic appetizers and a couple of meat dishes thrown in. Almyra is located in one of the nicer old houses in Halandri, just off Ethnikis Antistaseos str., the kind of house a pretty large family could live in happily, with a big, well-tended garden. We sat outside. Two other tables were occupied. Many Athenians probably were away for the weekend, one of the last before schools reopen and the winter frenzy keeps us all closer to home.

Despite the quiet, though, the service was impressively s-l-o-w. Our kids played at a table nearby and we adults sipped wine—that came fast—waiting for our food to arrive. The appetizers came out quickly: Haloumi cheese on the grill with pita bread slices (how can you mess that up?). It was fine. Grape leaves stuffed with mashed gavro (anchovies), which was totally passable, even though the leaves were tough and despite the fact that I had imagined whole silvery slivers of fish delicately wrapped inside small leaves. I am ever the optimist… The “authentic” Simi shrimp in a skillet was dead on arrival, soft and out of the water for longer than I care to think about. These also arrived fast. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. I’d say a good hour went by, punctuated only by the late arrival of a second order of that haloumi, which the two eight-year-olds in our company devoured hungrily.

We wondered aloud amongst ourselves and then aloud to our waiter, who was affable enough but rather unconcerned at the seeming disorganization in the kitchen that kept two plates of simple fried potatoes from reaching our table until the very last minute. And when they did arrive, they were fried soft.

One friend ordered the cuttlefish with greens, ordinarily an appetizer, as a main course. The dish was hearty and the portion good, but the almyra (saltiness) in the name of this restaurant morphed into inedibly salty in this dish. We couldn’t touch it.

The main courses arrived: fish biftekia (burgers), beef biftekia, and an order of grilled salmon with ouzo sauce. The ouzo sauce on the salmon was an ouzo-cream sauce, which was ok. The dish came with small broccoli florets covered in the same ouzo-cream sauce. The biftekia were weird. Two orders of beef biftekia had been cooked in such a way that at least one of the four pieces looked, well, soft and gray. It fell apart upon being touched by my fork as I attempted to cut it for my son. The other three burgers adhered better together and had a grilled meat color. On the fish bifteki, I had imagined something akin to a crabcake, tender and flaky and filled with freshness and herbs. Instead, two gray, tight, dense ovals arrived that did taste somewhat of something that might have swam somewhere, sometime, but with no finesse, no complexity, none of the sweetness of the sea but much of its…almyra. We left this lovely garden disappointed.

Cuisine: Seafood and fish classics and some taverna fare

Athens Area: Northern suburbs
Atmosphere: Lovely garden in the middle of Halandri
Service: The seahorse is the slowest moving creature in the sea. The service here is slower.

Wine List: Decent
Prices: 35 to 40 euro per person
Address: 39, Filikis Eterias str., Kato Halandri, tel. 210 6819109