Our Pagrati district recommendations, among the city’s most popular attractions for food, include classic and modern tavernas, Italian, all-day, street-food and unconventional spots, even Naxos cuisine fine-dining.
Press Café’s Mavro Provato
An enduring success story launched in 2012, this place, next to Proskopon Square, combines the logic of a modern mezze spot serving assorted shared dishes with the grace of an urban bistro. Its tables, lined along the Arrianou St pedestrian way, are constantly filled with customers, enjoying small and larger dishes such as the Myrto salad with grilled manouri cheese, mixed vegetables, nuts and raspberry sauce; Kaisaria pies; and pan-fried mushrooms with soutzouki (spicy sausage) and fresh herbs. The experience carries on with seafood such as steamed mussels, flambéed in white wine, as well as a delicious pork mix served on baking paper.
33 Arrianou, Pagrati, +30 210 7223466, Website, Facebook
Baba Ghanoush
One of the most popular street-food spots in the Pagrati district and Athens, overall, Baba Ghanoush devotes much of its effort to crispy falafel, served with various sauces and ingredient combinations, to be enjoyed either on the spot, as a wrap, or at one of the tables on Varnava Square. If opting for a table meal, you can also consider interesting salads, including one made with quinoa, avocado, valerian and citrus dressing. Vegan and vegetarian burgers with quinoa and sweet potato patties are another option, as are similar-minded sweets such as vegan chocolate tart with strawberry sauce. The place also serves refreshing homemade lemonade.
25-27 Ebedokleous, Pagrati, +30 212 1050351, Website, Facebook
Cupola
This stylish Italian restaurant has drawn attention to Evforionos St, a serene pedestrianised street both detached from and near busy Vasileos Konstantinou St. Orders placed here definitely need to include Neapolitan-style pizza topped with great combinations, including the Melanzana, with grilled eggplant and basil. It truly is worth accompanying the pizzas with some of the kitchen’s special proposals, among them handmade potato gnocchi with artichoke, spinach and mascarpone cream cheese; pappardelle with porcini mushrooms, as well as risotto with asparagus cream and lemon confit.
13 Evforionos, Pagrati, +30 , 211 4117444, Website, Facebook
B&E Goulandris Café-Restaurant
The all-day café and restaurant on the intermediate floor of the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation’s Museum of Contemporary Art is discreetly positioned and possesses a New York-style atmosphere. The menu, curated by the team behind the Kolonaki district’s IT restaurant, maintains this restaurant’s distinctive health-food approach. The museum café and restaurant’s menu features a variety of snacks, served until lunchtime, salads, including a bean salad with prawns, Florina peppers and marinated cucumber, pasta dishes, as well as meat or fish dishes such as grilled gurbell fish (mylokopi) with lemon-based artichoke cream. Special children’s dishes and interesting sweets are also on the menu.
Vyrinis
If in the mood for an old-style taverna, renowned Vyrinis, featuring a large, flower-filled yard, is the place to go in Pagrati. There is no need for experimentation here. The spot’s recipe of success is based on a deep-rooted tradition of fried and casserole selections. They include scrumptious, grandmother-recipe meatballs, golden fried potato chips, homemade dolmades (stuffed vine leaves) in egg-and-lemon sauce, imam bayildi (stuffed eggplants), as well as casserole dishes of the day and grilled meat.
11 Arhimidous, Pagrati, +30 210 7012153, Facebook
Lost Athens
This spot, operating on the basis of unorthodox culinary principles, immediately established its place amid the vibrant food circuit on Arhelaou St. Rather than being divided the customary way, into appetiser, main dish and dessert sections, its menu is presented as food that can be eaten by hand or with knife, fork or spoon. The cuisine on offer does not have geographic limitations. Food from various parts of the world serves as an inspiration for the place’s own proposals. These include ravioli with smoked eel, egg yolk confit, pecorino and fennel; calamari with vegetable potato gnocchi, peas and vegetable couscous; tacos filled with slow-cooked lamb fricassee, egg-and-lemon foam and fennel.
7 Arhelaou, Pagrati, +30 210 7230832, Website, Facebook
Musique Café
This hospitable spot with window walling, on the corner of Arrianou and Arhelaou streets, is open from early in the day until late at night, making it ideal for a coffee, drink or meal. The kitchen, offering interesting modern proposals, prepares dishes of the day, often incorporating into its recipes ingredients and meat hailing from the island Naxos. The Naxos salad with cherry tomatoes, caper leaves, onion, carob rusks and handmade xynomyzithra cheese; the spinach and rice with sautéed sea bream, nettle cream, brik, lemon and Naxos butter; as well as the grilled chicken fillet with tarragon and a sauce mixing Naxos cheese varieties are among the customer favourites.
37 Arrianou & Arhelaou, Pagrati, +30 210 7238900, Facebook
Spondi
Pagrati’s multi award-winning, iconic Spondi restaurant has offered a fine-dining celebration of ingredients and creativity since 1996. Possessing all the aura of a grand restaurant, Spondi, with the very gifted chef Aggelos Lantos at its helm, offers modern French cuisine, basing its selections on seasonal availability of produce. Though certainly not a place for casual, everyday outings, this restaurant, budgets permitting, promises a high-standard gastronomic experience worth considering.
