For the former, head to Diporto, a small, old mageirion (working-class restaurant) on Theatrou Street, just on the other side of Athinas Street and across the way from a corner shop that sells almost nothing but olives. Barba Mitso, the cook, started his career here a few decades ago as a busboy, only to finally buy the place himself. Diporto attracts a real cross section of the city, from local neighborhood kooks to yuppies and artsy types. If bean soup and boiled greens are not your ideal breakfast, you can certainly venture in at noontime.
If it’s tripe you’re after, though, gravitate toward the market in the wee hours. Its seedy but safe alleyways are home to three other mageiria. My favorite is called To Monastiri, or The Monastery, which sounds like someone’s idea of a joke, given the, well, unrefined environment. As in all mageiria, the kitchen is open, so you just head to the front of the restaurant, peer into the pots, and choose from a daily selection of about 20 dishes, including not only tripe soup but also the likes of stewed peas with dill; lamb and orzo casserole; and pork and greens with avgolémono (tangy egg and lemon sauce).
While you’re in the area, stop in at the quaint Stoa tou Vangeli, on Evripidou Street. Stoa refers to a kind of portico, or long cavernous entranceway, and that’s exactly where this mageirion is situated. As you walk in, you hear the chirping of a wall full of birds lined up in their cages. At one table, there will surely be a few old men, stationed there since early morning, passing their shiny copper carafe of retsina back and forth. But urban professionals also come here, for the home cooking and unselfconscious kitsch. If you savor but one dish here, make sure it is the anginares a la polita, a classic stew of artichokes, potatoes, and carrots in avgolémono.
A walk down Evripidou Street is a treat in itself. This is Athens’s spice row. Once you cross Athinas Street, you’ll pass, on the right, a few basement shops whose aroma will greet you before you reach the doorway. It’s garlic, tons of it, being tied up in those familiar ornamental braids and readied for distribution all over the city.
You might want to stop in at Elixir, where Panos Koniaris, a third-generation spice merchant, sells the best Greek herbs in the city. He speaks English and is a formidable source of information. Here, you will be able to choose from a half-dozen Greek oreganos, foraged from mountain slopes and salt-sprayed islands both. And you can learn about Cretan dictamo, the “lovers’ herb.” It’s not by chance that the place looks like an old apothecary, its dried herbs stocked in lovely deep wooden drawers—herbs play a considerable role in the country’s folk medicine.
Practically next door is Miran, not a spice vendor but a seller of something equally pungent: pastoúrma, a kind of charcuterie of air-dried beef seasoned with a thick coat of pepper, fenugreek, and other spices. You can buy a few slices and have a hotel-room picnic with some good bread and Greek cheeses—feta, kasséri, and some less familiar ones like manouri (semisoft and mild) and kopanistí (fiery and spreadable)—which you’ll be able to procure easily by backtracking a little on Evripidou, to the other side of Athinas Street. There, you’ll encounter two of the best cheesemongers in Athens: Vassilis Ziogos and Laskaris Brothers.
Street food should be part of the eating experience of every visitor to Athens, which means seeking out a rich, cheesy tyropita or a temptingly tangy souvlaki. My favorite tyropita can be found at a nondescript old-time bakery on Sarri Street (about a ten-minute walk from Evripidou), in Psirri, an area once filled with leather crafters and metalsmiths but now overtaken by bars, cafés, and faux-rustic meze restaurants (none very good). The tyropita is baked by Efstathios Tzovas, and though his sardonic humor will be lost on non–Greek speakers, his doughy feta-filled pies surmount all language barriers. Psirri is a fun place to stroll, looking through small shops for copperware and other trinkets.
Fans of handheld foods will also find bliss at Thanasis, on Mitropoleos Street, home of dripping souvlaki and gyro—skewered and grilled or sliced and roasted meat wrapped in pita. A veritable Athenian landmark, it was opened in the early 19th century by an Armenian who arrived via Turkey. (In fact, souvlaki and gyro first came to Greece with Armenian refugees.) You can either sit at one of the sidewalk tables to enjoy a whole platter of thinly sliced lamb or pork, grilled tomatoes, onions, parsley, and tsatsiki (yogurt, cucumber, and garlic sauce) with warm toasted pita, or order to go and eat on the run.
The best souvlaki, however, can be had at a seatless hole-in-the-wall known as Tou Hasapi, on Apollonos Street, at the beginning of the Plaka, just off Voulis Street. The butcher shop across the street (hasapi means “butcher”) supplies the meat for the garlicky, spicy, and well-sauced souvlaki.
Another good snack is a vegetable or cheese pie from always-packed Ariston, on Voulis Street, near Syntagma. Ariston hasn’t changed much since it first opened in 1906, the brainchild of an accomplished phyllo maker named Anastasios Lombotesis, who had emigrated from the island of Zakynthos to seek his fortune. He made it, and big, thanks largely to his first recipe: To this day, Ariston’s crisp cheese pie with its characteristic elliptical shape, homemade pastry, and simple filling of feta and myzíthra is the cornerstone of his heirs’ continued success.
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