Vinoterra Resto & Cava

It was one of those nights when reviewing a restaurant seemed a lot more like a chore than a pleasure. Our choice for the evening was either a new pasta place on Panormou or a wine-bar on Marinou Antypa in Herakleion. I live north and didn't want to stray too far from home. Wine Bar it was, and so we discovered to our pleasant surprise a place with good food, a laid back atmosphere, a happening bar filled with civilized people sipping bulbous glasses of wine, and decent prices. Vinoterra.

The space is simple and modern. A glass panel in the front of the restaurant makes it feel almost like a cafeteria or café and less like a restaurant and the modern but neutral furnishings bring it close to nondescript. The design could have more character. It falls into that category of cosmopolitan bland. 

I liked the small menu. That’s almost always a sign that the kitchen is careful, has thought things through and decided upon a few offerings that are done well. That is certainly the case here. One thing that needs improvement is the timing, not only between courses but also between the wine service and food service. Our first plate had arrived but the sommelier, who was knowledgeable and accommodating, had not yet come to the table to take our order. Then, wanting a second glass of an Aivali Nemea (a red from the Peloponnese), which I had never tried, we had to practically flag him down from across the room.

The first thing that came to the table was our salad, a delicious medley of escarole, endive, hazelnuts and chestnuts. This might sound ironic, but salads are often one of the worst things in a Greek restaurant, something literally tossed together, drenched in dressing, and pushed out of the kitchen. Not this one. It was made with care, beautifully balanced, and delicious.

My reviewer’s heart pushed me to try something that went against all my culinary instincts, a risotto with sour cream. But the waiter assured us it was really good, and I trusted him. My instincts were wrong (not about the waiter but about the dish). It was, indeed, very good. Surprisingly so. He mixed the dollop of sour cream into the vegetable risotto at our table, then served it—a delicious, creamy, lusciously tart but comforting dish of pillowy risotto. What a nice change from the porcini-studded, truffle-oil-drizzled, goop that comes out of more kitchens than I care to remember. This was a high starch night. Our next dish was a ragout of beef, broccoli and pecorino, woven among the slurpy pieces of gaganelli pasta, something like the twisted Cretan schioufichta pasta, if that means anything to more traditional Greeks. It was very tasty. I wish there had been more cheese in the plate. But we lapped it up like hungry children, finding it hard to resist almost any pasta dish.

A more serious dish of sea bass (lavraki) over selinoriza (celery root) purée was also lovely. The lavraki “blackened” had a sweet edge to it, and the selinoriza purée with saffron sauce acted as a lovely foil.

We sipped away at various wines by the glass, and mulled over dessert, which was an orange tart with chocolate ice cream. I liked the intense flavor of the orange and that combo—chocolate and orange—is one of my favorites.

Someone in that kitchen can cook!

Cuisine: Small and elegant, with Mediterranean touches
Athens Area: Herakleion
Decor-Atmosphere: Modern, sleek, a little impersonal, but with a happening bar scene made for civilized adults
Service: A little disorganized and a little slow, but accommodating and polite
Wine List: Excellent (The restaurant is actually part of the cava next door)
Prices: 25 -30 euro a person without wine
Address: 74-76 Marinou Antypa str., Neo Herakleion, tel.: 210-2792100 

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Armolia

A new fish meze place about five minutes from my house is always a welcome thought and the Halandri square, where Armolia is located, has become a hot and happening restaurant scene over the last 2 years.

Armolia is designed to look like an old bakaliko (grocery). This is a trend, not only in places around the square but in general around town, the answer, maybe, to our need for familiarity, comfort and the air of economy. How expensive can a neighborhood grocery store be, in other words?

Armolia falls into the category of places that have opened in droves these last two years, places where someone thought through the design a bit and yet still serve familiar food. You won't find foams, gels, or hunger-inducing hauteur here.  The food is simple and most of what we had was quite competent, each plate with its own little twist. People seemed to be having a good time all around us, sipping their ouzaki or house wine and finding some relief from the stress of the daily news.

I liked the beet salad with walnuts, a filling, nicely portioned dish with a vegetable I adore. Trying to keep my silhouette from exploding, I stayed away from dishes like the baked potato with cheese but did go for the fries with grated kefalograviera cheese, which are excellent, thin, crisp and tasty, the way a sinful, starchy fry should be. The mushrooms in a skillet with wine (pleurotus mushrooms to be exact) were lovely. The sauce is tasty and pleasantly winey, but the touch that makes this dish is the strips of pita bread that are crisped (fried?) and added to the otherwise soft mushrooms in a nice contrasting note. The fried zucchini don’t work for me here. Too thin and too soggy and nearly burnt. Neither did the walnut skordalia that I ordered in the side. This needed punch (and salt).

There is a whole range of fish and seafood mezedes and main course to choose from, including all the classics on the gill, several saganakia, steamed shellfish of varying type etc. I was pleasantly surprised with the stuffed kalamari (squid), a dish I usually don’t like. Here it is filled with a tangy bulgur mixture. The squid was nicely cooked and the pan sauces just right for bread. The octopus with mavrodafni wine is a dish I have tried in several better versions around town. What was missing here was the raison d’être for the sweet wine—if you don’t let it cook down a little and turn somewhat syrupy the dish is ordinary. Basically it’s a classic stifado with sweet wine instead of dry. Never one to reject a melted cheese dish, I did try the grilled Chios Mastello – I forgot to mention that the cuisine of Chios plays prominently in various dishes. It was nice, finished with a tangy tomato sauce.

Halandri is getting ever more crowded with cozy little places like Armolia that offer decent value for money, an outing that is affordable, food with a little twist that isn’t totally over the top, and a comfortable, well-appointed room that people feel good sitting in. Have they reinvented the wheel? No? Are these the times for such reinventions? Probably not. So, sip that ouzo and enjoy a decent meze before we all default…

Cuisine: pleasant, light, styled like an old bakaliko

Athens Area: Halandri, northern suburbs 

Decor-Atmosphere: pleasant, light, styled like an old bakaliko (grocery store) 

Service: helpful and accommodating even in the Friday night rush

Wine List: OK

Prices: 25-35 per person

Address: Central Halandri Square, tel.: 210-6856279

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Dal Professore

I wanted comfort food. It had been a stressful week. The idea of a soothing glass of red wine, a bowl of steaming pasta, some garlicky concoction from our Italian neighbors and the company of a good friend led us to a place I had been hearing about and had actually visited a few years ago: Dal Professore.

This Italian trattoria is situated in an old house in Maroussi, pretty much in the commercial heart of Athens' overcrowded northern suburb. When I had gone a few years back the meal was less than I had hoped for. But a different chef and the unabridged praise of more than a few trusted food friends led me back there. Unfortunately for a second time I was less than thrilled.

It was as much an attitude problem as a food issue. Our waiter was extremely difficult to understand and when we asked for details he seemed annoyed. It had been raining all week, so when he said that the seafood is always fresh I asked him how that could be when the weather has been so bad that fishermen don't go out. OK, maybe that was an unfair or a loaded question, one in which a food critic goes looking for trouble, but he responded nastily and that set me on guard.

We had the Romana salad, which is described as red radicchio, which led me to imagine the deliciously bitter real Italian radicchio that I love so much. Instead it was a simple lettuce salad with a very heavy, creamy dressing. We ordered it without the grilled chicken. When the bill came, I couldn't tell if we were charged the full amount or not for it.

A pizza marguerita, described as topped with tomato sauce, mozzarella, parmesan and basil came out without the basil, which I had imagined as velvety soft leaves perfuming this classic. It was ok, even basil-less. But the waiter insisted it was “In the sauce,”. A Vitello tonnato, one of my favorite Italian antipasti, made of paper-thin slices of beef carpaccio and creamy tuna sauce fell flat on this tongue, with none of the perkiness such a contradiction of flavors and ingredients is supposed to bring.

Then came our main course. The waiter had tempted us with a gnocchi special, on a night when the restaurant was occupied by us and three other tables. When we decided to order it he said it had already been taken. It was a one-order special? Hmmm….We opted for another classic, homemade tagliatelle with sausage stew and saffron. The stew was hardly a stew, but rather a dry gathering of decent sausage slices hiding among the folds of pasta. As for the saffron, we assume it was hiding out somewhere with the basil. It was hard to taste.

Dessert: The classics here, too. We went for the amaretto panna cotta, which was, indeed, redolent of bitter almond, which I love, but was a bit dense and stodgy from an oversupply of gelatin.

Have I come down hard? Maybe. Each review is the reflection of an experience. What can I say? I just described mine.

Cuisine: Trattoria classics 

Athens Area: Maroussi, northern suburb 

Decor-Atmosphere: Cozy old house 

Service: Snotty and borderline rude 

Wine List: Sympatico 

Prices: 35-45 euro a person 

Address: 47 Dionyssou & Hatziantoniou str., Maroussi, tel.: 210-6149000

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Bakalogatos

How is that some restaurants manage to serve very good food in very pleasant surroundings for very good prices, while others, often times serving similar fare just don’t understand that value for money is where it’s at these days. Bakalogatos ("The Grocery Cat"), a quaint little restaurant in multi-ethnic Kypseli, right on the central drag of Fokionos Negri, definitely falls into the first category. One recent visit with a small group of friends left us filled to the core on delicious, Kassos-island-inspired home cooking but hardly empty in the pocket. The bill came to about 20 euro for each of us and we ate very well.

Getting to Fokionos by car and parking in the neighborhood could be a bit of an issue, but an extra 8 or 10 euros handed over to one of the nearby garages still makes this place a great value. Alternatively, you can walk from the Victoria train station.

The place is designed casually and the energy is light and happy. The contemporary country look is filled with whites in various shades. Despite the small room, it seems spacious.

The menu is organized in an unusual way: Apo to Bakaliko (From the Grocer’s), Saganakia, Tiganies, Patates (Potatoes), Kassos specials, mezedakia se piatakia (meze plates), salads and vegetable dishes, pilafs, pasata, and chef’s suggestions are the categories one has to choose from. There is always one traditional Greek savory pie as a daily special.

One of the most memorable dishes were the excellent and surprisingly juicy keftedes (meatballs), a simple dish granted, and maybe one that’s hard to get excited by, especially for us jaded restaurant critics, but these were unique in that they were juicy and crisp all at once. The tiny, bite-sized Kassos dolmades, filled with a ground meat and rice mixture, were delicious. We liked the grilled, mild Chios mastelo cheese, a simple meze nicely presented and generously portioned. Some dishes were more artful than others, among them a napoleon-like fried eggplant dish in which layers of crisp-skinned eggplant were interspersed with a dollop of katiki cheese. The eggplants with yogurt lacked that Anatolian excessiveness, but they were good. A plate of roasted oregano-flavored potatoes were tasty but a little cold; The fries, though, were excellent. I loved the good-quality sausages on the grill, too. One of the night’s real winners, by far, though, was the giouvetsi with shrimp. The flavor was rich and round, the shrimp fresh and deliciously briny with a waft of the sea still evident. I have to contrast this dish with one for which I had high expectations but was somewhat let down: the Kassiotikes makarounes. This is a local dish that, when made well, is an irresistible play of opposites: sweet caramelized onions, sour sitaka yogurt-like cheese, and sating homemade pasta. Here the dish was dull. It was the only thing I found wanting on the menu.

There is a lot more to choose from at Bakalogatos, from classic Greek regional pasta dishes and pilafs, to a large array of starters and the chef’s suggestions, of course, which include pork with thyme and limes (moscholemona), pork loin with porcinis and red wine, and another pork loin on the grill, cooked with tomato, manouri cheese and arugula.

These sound like definite reasons to return to this cute little place that gets the recipe right: very good food, nice environs, affordable prices.

Cuisine: Very good Greek regional classics, with an emphasis on Kassos cuisine

Athens Area: Kypseli 

Decor-Atmosphere: Cozy and casual

Service: Friendly

Wine List: Limited but acceptable

Prices: Just right for these dire times – about 15-20 euro per person

Address: 72, Fokionos Negri str., Kypseli, tel. 210 821 6598

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Cilentio

I embraced this quaint little restaurant on Mantzarou Street in downtown Athens when I visited it a year or so ago, liking the homey, cozy feel of the space and the artful but down-to-earth cuisine. A recent visit, however, left me with a less enamored feeling.

We sat downstairs, in what essentially is the imiypogio (semi-basement), which was partly my fault for making a reservation at about 7 p.m. on a Saturday night. The space, while cozy thanks to a warming, working fireplace, is cramped, so cramped that five of us could not sit facing one another round the table, but rather in a Pi (Π) formation, because the only other table downstairs was too close for chairs to sit back to back. I felt a little like a bridesmaid in a wedding party!

Cilentio’s menu is a potpourri of Mediterranean and Greek dishes, with items like bresaola pouches, carpaccio (sooo last decade!!), grilled vegetables, and more making up the bulk of appetizers. A lot of Greek-Med combinations of flavors define the menu, in dishes like katiki cheese-jamon Serrano-Zucchini tart (an appetizer) and greens salad with grapes and manouri cheese. Other items are more hybrid—rooster stuffed with graviera cheese, spinach and bacon, salmon-broccoli “crumble”, black cod with Greek fava (split pea purée) are a few such examples. Some things are silly and out of place, like the 95 euro Wagyu fillet with Port sauce and truffled mashed potatoes. I wonder how many orders of this come in a night.  This is a plate that belongs to fatter times, when people spent money with less hesitation.

Every meal starts here with a warm bowl of velouté. Ours was a base of celery, drizzled with olive oil. It had all the right soothing elements. A spinach-haloumi (cheese) salad was tasty and generously portioned. I liked the sweet and savory combination of flavors in those bresaola pouches, which come served with fig jam.

Main courses were pretty good. I ordered the duck, a weakness of mine when the mercury drops, as it had that night. It was a little over cooked for medium rare, as I had ordered it, and was tougher than I like it. On a scale of one to 10 I’d probably give it a seven. The wine sauce was tasty. Friends ordered the black cod with fava and wild mushroom sauce. The fish was nicely prepared. This dish is well composed and nicely presented. A rib-eye marinated in olive oil and seasoned with Himalayan salt (Messolonghi or Greek island seas salt isn’t tasty enough??) was competent.

I wasn’t thrilled with the desserts, which seemed a tad pretentious, especially the “modern” cheesecake, which was a cave-like mound of white cheese (cream cheese and whipped cream?) whose center was blood-red with a compote of berries. It looked like the sculpture of a small volcano rather than a soothing dessert. The coffee mousse with caramel foam, fried chocolate bits and cookies was ok, a little self-conscious and obviously anxious to impress.

I remember a better meal here the last time around. Maybe the key is to keep things just a little simpler.

Cuisine: Mediterranean and international pot-pourri

Athens Area: Downtown Athens

Decor-Atmosphere: Cozy, warm, low-key

Service: Good

Wine List: Good

Prices: 30-35 euro a person without wine

Address: 3 Mantzarou str. & 54, Solonos str. (paved walkway), Kolonaki

Tel.: 210-3633144

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Gefseis me Onomasia Proelefsis

I hadn’t been up to Kifissia to catch up with chef Nena Ismirnoglou at Gefseis in close to two years. One recent visit on a Friday night made me angry at myself for not being hungry enough to savor more of this lovely restaurant’s delicious food. Nena, gourmet earth mother, takes the comforting flavors and dishes of Greek cuisine and brings them to an almost ethereal level. Hers is a female approach—to nourish, warm the soul, and provide delicious flavors in every dish; what a great welcome for the intellectual approach to Greek food that took over this city for a while.

This chef loves chips. And she made us love her versions of high-end beet chips (served beautifully with a silky dollop of Santorini fava) and classic potato chips, served artfully over a mound of grilled calamari strips and smoky eggplant cream. The beets retained a surprising flavor and the fava (split pea purée), garnished with volvous (bulbs) and roasted olives, was delicious. I loved the contrast between the chewy but tender calamari and the thin crisp potato chips in the second dish.

The winter cabbage salad at Gefseis brings an otherwise pedestrian cold-weather dish to new heights. Shredded cabbage and celery root are tossed with soft bits of the sweetest red pumpkin and countered with the subtle sharpness of green olive-bergamot confit. There is a pinch of boukovo (hot pepper flakes) somewhere in the dressing that magically holds the whole thing together. It’s one of the nicest salads I’ve sampled in a while, not too wet, perfectly balanced, pleasantly acidic.

We had a warming fish soup, a touch sharp with acid, but filled with chunks of cooked langoustine. The soup is tomato-based and is an elegant rendition of the classic Greek island fish soup.

So far so good. Light, healthy fare. Then came the peinirli (dough boat). I’ve never met a peinirli I didn’t like, but one that is mignon, dripping with butter, billowing with melted feta, and dotted with avgotaraho (botargo) is just impossible to resist. I loved it.

My favorite dish was the one I almost didn’t have room to eat, a perfectly prepared seared tuna in mavrodafni sauce. I wish I had had the stamina and space to savor a few other of Gefseis specialties, such as the turkey “like stifado” and the politico pilafi that accompanies Nena’s juicy keftedes (meatballs). The goat cooked in bitter orange sauce with mashed-potato galaktoboureko sounds like something to order next time, too!!

Cuisine: New Greek classics by Nena Ismirnoglou

Athens Area: Northern suburbs

Decor-Atmosphere: Civilized and pleasant. A great old house filled with tasteful antiques that I could live in forever

Service: Very good

Wine List: Very good

Prices: 45-60 euro a person

Address: 317 Kifissias ave., Kifissia

Tel.: 210-8001402

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Athiri

We visited Athiri on a pre-holiday night, when the weather was uncannily balmy and the anger over a smoking ban no one is enforcing hot (at least to me). That said, I was delighted to see that Athiri, a small restaurant for which abiding by the antismoking regulations must have cost a chunk of cash (building a separate glass-enclosed, well-ventilated room), was totally legal! The room is in the garden, quasi attached to the rest of the restaurant, with a view of the door leading to the kitchen.

Greece is the  bad boy of Europe when it comes to enforcing the smoking ban. Restaurateurs egregiously dismiss it and use the economic crisis as a crutch. Enough said. What most of us are concerned with are the food, service, ambience, etc. Athiri gets lots of brownie points in all those areas, since chef owner  Alexandros Kardassis is one of the most talented young Greek cooks around. 

Athiri is pricier than I had expected at about 50 euro a person. There is a definite artfulness to everything presented here and some things appear on the plate with a delicacy that belies their rustic roots or hearty, robust flavors. The fava (split pea purée) is a prime example, gorgeously plated with slivers of silvery anchovies and strips of red pepper waiting to be mixed into the velvety purée. The taramosalata (carp roe salad) with skate (salahi) is a plate worth photographing, so beautiful and refined in its appearance, so delicate in flavor. The dill oil marries it all together like silk thread on a fine cloth. We loved the giant beans with herbs and mushrooms and especially loved the fact that the kitchen was willing to serve them forth without the kavourmas (cured beef, like confit) that’s listed on the menu (one of us in the group was a vegetarian). The trahana was another winner, with crabmeat, chives and another flavored oil, this one bright green with parsley.

The main courses were not as strong. The scorpion fish (skorpina) risotto with lime and ginger seemed to have a slight identity problem, cool with the lime and ginger but lacking in the comforting tones of a more traditional Italian risotto. I ordered the marinated duck leg crusted with figs and served with apple salad, which was very tasty, rustic, but also elegant. The lamb leg sous vide in thyme sauce was tender but not as exciting as I anticipated.

Desserts are a delicious blur! Well, not really. The three flavors of crème brûlée, a restaurant signature, is as tasty as ever, with caramel, Greek coffee, and orange cardamom options. The kormos (chocolate ‘trunk’) is what every child dreams of at the age of 50…

I like Athiri. For all the compliments, though, I couldn’t help but feel that the restaurant had somehow plateaued—reached a certain level and is a little bit stuck there. Maybe it’s time to spend a season away behind the stoves near one of Europe’s or America’s many masters, to renew the spirit and give a jolt of freshness to a menu that has changed a little too cautiously, if at all, since this lovely restaurant opened its doors a couple of years ago.

Cuisine: New Greek cooking by Alexandros Kardassis and his able team

Athens Area: Kerameikos (metro station)

Decor-Atmosphere: lovely old house off Piraios Street, the kind that makes urban life…livable

Service: Competent and attentive

Wine List: Good

Prices: A little steep for these times, at around 50 euro a person

Address: 15, Plataion str., Kerameikos

Tel.: 210-3462983

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Arcadiani - Oi nostimies ton giagiadon

A weekend in the Peloponnese might include many things, from visits to the wineries of Nemea and Mandineia and elsewhere, a tour of the archeological wonders, a stop in Nafplion, to a jaunt down to the Mani or a stroll through one of the region’s beautifully preserved villages, like Levidi, Stemnitsa, and Dimitsana. The one thing it should definitely include, at least from the perspective of a self-respecting food lover, is a drive up the winding road to the village of Psari in Arcadia, where Makis Papoulias has put together a small but impressive workshop where local women produce some of the best spoon sweets I have tasted, local pasta products, and some delicious desserts, including the very local karydokourambiedes (walnut Easter cookies). He is an ardent collector of antique cookery books and other home kitchen tools and the small but well-organized museum is a walk through time. But even more impressive than the sight of a few women scraping off the peels of bergamots, grapefruits, and oranges to make the workshop’s famed sweets (that’s what they were in the midst of doing when we arrived), is the restaurant that Papoulias has organized in the space. I had one of the best meals in recent memory in this lovely untouristed village, real home cooking made from obviously top-notch, fresh ingredients, with nothing on the table that was out of season.

Our simple meal—prepared by a couple of local women who work at the facility—started with a basket of home-made bread. Good sign. Next came a delicious tyrosalata, a creamy blend of feta, yogurt, diced green peppers and parsley. A plate of mapa (cabbage) with local sausages puts to shame the best wurst and sauerkraut concoctions. This was sweet from slow-cooked cabbage and tangy from the orange-flavored local sausages. One of my favorite regional dishes in all of Greece is the black-eyed peas and greens of the Peloponnese. Slowly cooked, as comforting as a down cover, healthy, and unsparing on the olive oil, which gives it its final, soft texture. Here, this dish was divine. We feasted on other small plates to start with, too. One of the best was the dark, grainy skordalia (garlic purée), made with both bread and walnuts. We sampled Arcadiani’s own homemade singlino, which is nothing like the stuff we find cryovacked in supermarket refrigerators. This was a piece of pork tenderloin that had been cured. It was sweet instead of numbingly salty. Excellent. A home-made squash pie was also excellent: light, flavorful, just the right thickness.

Why would a Greek lunch stop here? The main courses were yet to come! These included a soul-warming plate of straggistes (strained) hilopites (egg noodles) for our vegetarian companion and an absolutely delicious country braised lamb dish served with hilopites in tomato sauce. The lamb literally fell off the bone.

We drank a modest amount of Ktima Spyropoulos, thinking of the drive back, and we feasted on excellent yogurt topped with bergamot spoon sweets, and a heaping plate of sugar-dusted karydokourambiedes, which were spiced with cloves and gave me just the right sugar kick to have the energy to walk around the village afterwards. It was all worth it.

Cuisine: Regional dishes made with care and absolutely delicious

Area: in the Peloponnese

Decor-Atmosphere: Country comforts in a gorgeous setting with a view stretching all the way to Megalopolis

Service: Friendly

Wine List: Local, mainly Ktima Spyropoulos

Prices: 15-25 euro per person

Address: Psari Trikolonon Gortynias, Arcadia

Tel.: 27910-27161/27162

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Ep' Avli

So we’re all on the lookout for pleasant places to eat on a Saturday night (or any other night for that matter) that won’t cost us an arm and a leg, especially as the country teeters on the verge of bankruptcy and international humiliation. If there is a view of the Acropolis to remind us of glories past, all the better. If the food is more than edible, we’ve got a winner on our hands. In the case of Ep’ Avli, a convivial taverna in the heart of Metz, all of the above criteria are met.

When the weather is warm enough to sit outside the rooftop view is soul – sating. The food is simple and simpatico, the prices right. In winter, though, when there is no view but the rooms themselves and the faces of your company across the table, it’s actually hard to see them. Why? Because the smoke is thicker than the fog on a hot July day. It makes me burn with fury that Greeks just can’t abide by the law. It pisses me off even more that restaurant operators have no qualms about giving you some stupid story excusing themselves from what is very clear: It is illegal to smoke indoors in public spaces. Illegal, got it? I just created the one-woman smoke police and I will out the abusers in this space!

Now onto the reason most of you read this column: to eat here or not to eat here.

Ep’ Avli, which is housed in a great old house and is simply appointed with plain rooms of pale yellow decorated with a collection of black-and-white plates, offers up a menu of Greek taverna classics for prices in tune with our ever-shrinking buying power. The fava (yellow split pea puree) is of the chunky not velvety variety, and tasty, with a touch too much salt. It comes topped with capers and parsley. The taverna litmus test for me is melitzanosalata (eggplant salad), which here comes right out of the fridge, cold but velvety and pleasing smoky despite the chill. We sampled the pumpkin fritters, shaped oblong and a little over-fried (dark brown), but not bad. I liked the tigania (fried pork) with retsina. The wine was subtle, the meat tender, the whole dish flavorful as a good meze should be. We weren’t charmed by the eggplant imam or by the dolmades, both of which came with wiggles of yogurt edesma piped over the top in an attempt at plate design. Better to keep it simple in my humble opinion. The dolmades have a filling of rice, onions, and dill. They were competent, but nothing stellar. Ditto on the stuffed eggplant, whose flavor was clouded by the pillowy pile of yogurt on top. Obsessed and angry at the smoke, I somehow missed this place’s claim to fame, a baked feta dish, which I hear is good.

Desserts were pretty standard: a nest of kataifi filled with scoops of mastiha ice cream and topped with vyssino (sour cherry), and a chocolate brownie-like cake with a heavy dose of syrup. There was something less than homemade about them. Again, given the simple environs and the taverna air, a straightforward dessert like great homespun halva might work better here.

Cuisine: Classic taverna fare

Athens Area: near the center

Decor-Atmosphere: cigarette smoke clouds the simple rooms in this old, neoclassic house

Service: Friendly, competent

Wine List: Xyma only, although the owner did come to our table and say he could “get us a bottle” if we really wanted one

Prices: 15-20 euro per person

Address: 14 Arhimidous str., Pangkrati

Tel.: 210-7014836

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Matsuhisa Athens (Nobu)

I don’t know if it’s against the current spirit of the times to write about places that are, well, très cher. On the other hand, most of the recent meals I have had in restaurants that are more pedestrian, spruced up tavernas, really, are getting tired. The menu in most of these joints is pretty much the same with a few personal “twists”: fava (split pea purée), fries, soutzoukakia, maybe a pita of the day, some salads with nams that usually promise a lot more than they deliver, etc. Then there is Matsuhisa. It was amazingly crowded on a recent Friday night, absolutely delicious.

I had refrained from going, mainly because I feared that I’d like it too much!

The space is not quite what I had anticipated. Nicely appointed in lively browns, Matsuhisa stakes no claim to zen calm. The decor is busy and the place bustling and noisy. The wait staff does an excellent job of initiating customers into the world of Nobu Matsuhisa’s empire, by explaining specials that are specials in every restaurant, by suggesting the complex tasting menus for two, by suggesting dishes for novices and more experienced palates alike.

We started with a fabulous plate of “new” sashimi, tongue-sized pieces of very tender salmon that had been flash seared and served forth in a delicious sweet sauce swirled with another sauce made of what I think was smoked eel. The presentation is stunning. The tuna in jalapeno sauce was less spicy than I had hoped and the tuna marinated to the point of being thoroughly cooked. It was very good. The blackened cod, a house special in Nobu restaurants all over the world, was arguably the best piece of fresh cod I have ever had. It was perfectly cooked, seared and crusted with a sweet sauce, and served with an artful pencil-like piece of pink pickled ginger. The fish flaked off like a puffs of cumulus clouds, so light and tender and just delicious. The rolls were very good, but rolls are rolls, even the special Matsuhisa roll with several different kinds of fish and a sprinkling of crunchy roe. For me, one of the great dishes of the night was neither sushi, sashimi, or fish at all, but an unlikely, extremely simple, delicate, and earthy wedge of cabbage! Yes, cabbage, cooked in the wood-burning oven that stands tall as soon as you walk in and peer into the open kitchen. It as dressed with a few flakes of black truffle and a drizzling of truffle oil. It needed a little salt, at least for my palate, but it was absolutely surprising and original and the kind of thing I am inclined to try, granted in a more pedestrian version, in my own kitchen. The fresh salad with tuna slices was delicate and tender and the sauce amazing: a concoction of finely chopped onions and sesame oil that united the entire plate.

Desserts were to die for here, too. The chocolate bento box came with a piece of dense chocolate ganache cake and a side of green tea ice cream. They played off each other beautifully, the deep, dark, overwhelming power of the chocolate tempered by the cool aloofness of the ice cream. We also loved the espresso mousse in a shot glass with Suntori whiskey foam.

Matsuhisa was fabulous, totally outrageously priced, but the kind of meal that you remember well past the next morning. And, hey, it’s the holidays. We indulged...

Cuisine: Contemporary, artful Japanese fusion

Athens Area: Southern suburbs, near the sea

Decor-Atmosphere: Zen with a happening buzz

Service: Very professional and informed

Wine List: Excellent wine list and sake list

Prices: Close your eyes and take out the plastic (120+ euro per person)

Address: Astir Palace Hotel, 40 Apollonos str., Vouliagmeni

Tel.: 210-8960510

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