Varsos

A visit to Varsos, a culinary landmark in Athens that looks much the same as it did 60 years ago, is like traveling back in time to one of the city’s grand patisseries of the 1950s. The venue, which is still in the hands of the Varsos family who originally opened it, is one of the most famous of Athens’ old-style coffeehouses and is the only one that has kept its traditional charm over the last several decades. Varsos was established in 1892 in central Athens, but it is the wonderfully old-fashioned Kifisia location, to which the patisserie moved in 1932, that has made the venue famous. At the beginning of the 20th century, Kifisia was a holiday destination for rich Athenians, and their stately summer mansions still dot this beautiful yet ever-expanding northern suburb, which is now popular with professionals, families and expats.

Student Special

In early September and October, Athens – just like many other cities around the world – sees an influx of young people leaving home for the first time to spend the next four years in intellectual pursuits and drinking coffee. Few among them are as concerned with what they’re eating as they are with other, seemingly more important matters, and so Greek student life is usually associated with deliveries of souvlaki, pizza and other minor domestic disasters. But for young people eating on the cheap, fast food doesn’t have to be the only option; local restaurants often offer student specials this time of year.

Remoutsiko

The working-class area of Brahami has never been Athens’ hottest gastronomic destination. It is a mostly residential neighborhood, halfway between the city center and the exotic beach-loving southern suburbs. Like most of the city’s suburbs, in the not-so-distant past, this area was once made up mostly of fields. Now formally named Agios Dimitrios (St. Dimitrios, after St. Dimitrios’s church), it has a vibrant local market. It’s also home to Remoutsiko, a family-owned, family-friendly taverna focusing on meat. Housed in an old converted barn, the restaurant has been around for some 30-plus years.

ENOA

Editor's note: We're sorry to report that ENOA has closed. Situated by the sea in the marina of Agios Kosmas, ENOA is part of a truly strange neighborhood. There are a couple of nightclubs, some cottages and the enormous, badly lit rowing and sailing buildings that have been left to molder after the 2004 Olympics – but mostly the feeling is of an abandoned wasteland by the sea. The entrance to ENOA, an area club, is equally unimpressive: a number of trophies cramped behind a glass display followed by a cavernous dining room that, with its harsh, unflattering neon lights, resembles a hotel from 1960s rural Greece.

Ask CB: Greece's Autumnal Dessert?

Dear Culinary Backstreets, I’ve noticed that a dish called “moustalevria” pops up in shops all over Athens in the autumn months. What is it, and where can I get it?

Pnyka

Dimitris Kotsaris was more proselytizer than baker. Rather than a flour-dusted apron, this mild-mannered gentleman would wear elegant suits to meet with journalists, bearing two or three kilos of his famous whole-wheat bread as a gift. He was an ardent believer in the medicinal qualities of bread and preached widely that good bread promoted good health, once even taking his case to Harvard, where he delivered a talk about the role of well-made loaves in healthy diets. In 1981 Kotsaris opened Pnyka, the pulpit from which he spread his yeasty gospel, and gave the bakery the Greek name for the hill downtown where, in the golden years of Ancient Greece, Athenians gathered for the general assemblies that played such a formative part in the creation of democracy. It is quite fitting then that the first Pnyka shop opened in Syntagma (“Constitution”) Square. The bakery has since added two more shops in the city, in Exarchia and in Pagrati, the headquarters of the operation, and its following is such that last year a third was established in Vienna. Kotsaris passed away last year but his vision lives on through his son George, who has taken over the business.

CB on the Road: Strofi, Piraeus’s Hidden Seafood Gem

It’s a long drive from Athens to Perama, the westernmost terminal of the port town of Piraeus, and the payoff is, at first sight, minimal. To the left is the port’s industrial zone – a forest of blue and orange cranes that tower over the sea. To the right is a stretch of industrial wasteland: old electricity plants, derelict factories, walls with enormous graffiti celebrating Piraeus’s very successful team, Olympiacos, and then a jumble of recently built high-rise buildings on a rocky hill. First populated in the 1920s by immigrants from Asia Minor, Istanbul and the Pontus (Black Sea) region, this suburb of Piraeus now has about 25,000 residents, most of whose livelihoods depend on the dockyards that have been here since the 1930s. Perama remains a proud, working-class neighborhood, and it is no accident that the early Greek hip-hop of the ’90s and the so-called Low Bap hip-hop genre and movement started here.