The 10 Best Cultural Restaurants In Athens

Avocado is regarded as the finest vegetarian restaurant in Athens. Located on Nikis Street close to the Greek Parliament, Avocado prides itself on offering wholesome meals that are good for both the body and the soul, featuring home-made breads and cakes, fresh fruits, vegetables and smoothies with no artificial flavors or preservatives. The menu offers a wide range of inventive pasta dishes, pizzas, salads, soups and panini. Among the dishes to look out for are guacamole, falafel, spicy dahl soup, macrobiotic platter with plenty of brown rice and fresh greens, and avocado penne and parmigiana di zucchini.

Mani Mani is one of the most highly regarded restaurants in Athens, serving up regional cuisine from the Mani region in the far south of Greece – the owners’ original home. The restaurant is located just a few minutes’ walk from the Acropolis. The menu is focuses on excellent, simple cuisine made using local ingredients from Mani, so look out for dishes including filo parcels with manouri cheese, octopus with fava, and bruschetta served with siglino – the traditional cured ham of the Mani region.

Thea Terrace Bar is an ideal spot for lunch and offers an extraordinary vantage point from which diners can look out over the old town of Athens and across to the Acropolis. The bar is part of the Central Athens Hotel in the historic old city known as Plaka, once the home of the Turkish governor of Greece in the days before the Greek War of Independence. Plaka is built around the northern and eastern slopes of the Acropolis and is made up of small winding lanes and passages. At the Thea Terrace Bar you can drop in for plates of traditional mezes, or cheese with Florina peppers along with a glass of ouzo.

The Funky Gourmet can lay claim to being one of the most distinguished restaurants in Athens. Having opened in November 2009, the restaurant gained its first Michelin star in 2012 and its second in 2014. The philosophy of the restaurant is to create, innovate, and re-think cooking and ensure that diners enjoy a stimulating and evocative experience. You can find curious flavor combinations on the menu, including smoked ice cream sandwiches and classic Greek botargo – salted fish roe – served with white chocolate, as well as classics such as langoustines, snails, and truffled foie gras paired with an excellent wine.

For 12 years in a row Spondi was voted the best restaurant in the whole of Greece, and in 2013 was ranked as number 97 in a run-down of the best restaurants in the world by Restaurant Magazine. Established in 1996, Spondi won its first Michelin star in 2002 and was awarded a second in 2008. The restaurant itself is located next to the Panathenian Marble Stadium, which hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896 in the Pagrati district of Athens. Elegance and refinement are the aims of the owners of Spondi, with dishes such as pigeon, crab, langoustine, veal sweetbreads, and milk-fed lamb with herb cocotte on the menu.

Orizontes is situated on Lycabettus, the highest peak of Athens, and thus offers diners an utterly breathtaking view across this most ancient and beautiful of cities. Located 277 meters above the city, diners can look out at the Acropolis, the Saronic Gulf, and Piraeus in the distance. There is a small 19th century church on the hill of Lycabettus along with the restaurant. On the menu, you will find pleurotus mushrooms served with tomatoes from Santorini, feta cheese from Epirus served in dough with thyme honey and sesame seeds, shrimps with gruyere from Naxos, and chicken cooked in Samos wine with mushrooms and French fries.

The GB Corner Restaurant is all about sophistication and chic elegance. Set in the Hotel Grand Bretagne, which was once a fashionable hang-out for the Athens literati, the restaurant features Art Deco interior decor and has long been regarded as one of the most refined spots for dinner in all of Athens. The cuisine fuses classic Greek fare with international influences – the head chef Sotiris Evangelou trained under the great Frenchman Alain Ducasse and previously worked in kitchens in Monte Carlo, Provence, and Hong Kong. An open kitchen enables visitors to watch as their food is prepped; dishes on offer include oysters, roast cod with peppers and vinaigrette, shrimp, lobster, octopus and calamari, and roast baby goat cooked in a clay pot.