What would a Greek city be without baklava? Without Greek coffee, a thin layer of froth afloat on the steaming brew, sipped slowly from a small demitasse? Without frappe, the turbopowered indigenous iced-coffee creation? (Frappe is made by shaking instant-coffee granules with sugar and ice, then adding cold water and a touch of evaporated milk.) And, finally, what would any of that be without great venues to people-watch or just read the paper?
The finest baklava in town is at Caravan. The flagship shop, on Voukourestiou Street, is my favorite. You can’t sit here, but you can buy kilos of a huge variety of jewel-size bites. There are the traditional diamonds and squares packed with walnuts and/or almonds, as well as little phyllo crowns—finger-size shirred cylinders called saraglidakia—filled with pistachios, with dried apricots, with prunes, and more. Sheep’s-milk butter perfumes every piece. My own weaknesses are the chocolaty coils and the chocolate phyllo squares (known as sokolatenio baklava).
Athens is a café society, and the cream of the crop sips at Da Capo, on Kolonaki Square. The best time to come here is in the morning, around eight o’clock, when the city’s newspaper editors, government ministers, and other power brokers gather to sip a frappe or a not-so-Greek cappuccino. The attraction at this time of the day is as much the atmosphere as the breakfast special, a chocolate-filled tsoureki (the briochelike Greek Easter bread). If you get here much past 8:45, it’s likely to be sold out.
I often find refuge at Desiree, on Dimokritou Street, off Kolonaki Square. Just about the last 1950s pastry parlor left in Athens, it’s the place to see dowagers gossiping over dainty pastries and good Greek coffee. It’s also the place to sample classic koulourakia and voutimata, lightly sweetened cookies and dunking biscuits, respectively.
Another pleasant spot for coffee—or ouzo or a light snack—is Oraia Ellas (Beautiful Greece), the café at the Center for Greek Folk Art, on Pandrossou Street. And the shops here—offering a whole range of household antiques, from island-made plates to kneading troughs and wooden bread stamps, as well as some table linens and other textiles—encourage browsing for hours.
The charms of Athens have revealed themselves to me slowly. For as long as this city has been my adopted home, it has seemed at once daunting and welcoming. So it is the hunt for its little secrets that I’ve embraced, the stripping away of layers to find the heart. That odyssey has kept Athens alive and ever fascinating for me. It will for you, too.
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