Top 10 Restaurants in Athens, Greece

Athens is cooking with a confidence that would have surprised people who visited a decade ago. The city that once asked visitors to eat quickly before catching a ferry to the islands has become a genuine culinary destination in its own right, with two restaurants holding two Michelin stars each, a restaurant atop the Stavros Niarchos Foundation named Best Restaurant in Greece for 2026 by La Liste, a Piraeus waterfront seafood kitchen ranked among the top 1,000 restaurants in the world, and a generation of chefs trained in Paris and Tokyo and Copenhagen who came home and started cooking the Greek pantry with a seriousness and ambition it had never previously received at scale. None of that has replaced the oldest tavernas or the market-adjacent ouzeri or the deli-restaurants that preserve culinary traditions going back to Anatolia. Athens now has both, and the range is genuinely impressive. These restaurants are worth your time in no particular order.

Delta

Atop the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Kallithea with panoramic views of the Saronic Gulf from one of the most architecturally dramatic buildings in modern Greece, Delta holds two Michelin stars and a Green Star for sustainability and was named Best Restaurant in Greece for 2026 by La Liste with a score of 86 out of 100. Chefs George Papazacharias and Thanos Feskos draw on Greek landscapes as the inspiration for an inventive tasting menu that combines classic Greek flavors with contemporary methods, fermentation, and a deep focus on the local ocean and soil. The cooking is described as avant-garde Greek cuisine that looks like modern art and tastes like home, the setting is architectural grandeur, and a dinner here is described by serious food travelers as the milestone meal in Athens that everything else is measured against. Reserve well in advance.

Spondi

A two-Michelin-star institution in the Pagkrati neighborhood that has held its stars since 2002, Spondi is Athens' most enduringly celebrated fine dining restaurant and one of the most consistently recognized in all of Greece, scoring 83.5 in the 2026 La Liste global ranking and featuring in every authoritative guide to the city's best cooking. Set in a neoclassical building with a vaulted stone dining room and a courtyard for evening service, Spondi offers refined French-Greek cuisine with an extensive wine list and a level of service described as attentive yet discreet, elegant without being pretentious. Visitors who came in just for desserts were truly amazed by the refinement and balance of what arrived, and those who took the full tasting menu describe it as one of the great restaurant experiences available in southern Europe.

Varoulko Seaside

A Michelin-starred seafood restaurant on the Piraeus waterfront at Mikrolimano harbor, led by chef Lefteris Lazarou, ranked among the top 1,000 restaurants in the world by La Liste, and described by the most thorough guides as the outstanding seafood destination in greater Athens, Varoulko Seaside transforms the daily Aegean catch into a tasting menu that adapts every day around what is fresh and what is best. The squid with pesto and saffron and the lobster pasta are signatures that appear in multiple accounts, the scallops with chorizo and tuna with black garlic are representative of a kitchen that applies genuine creativity to the freshest seafood available, the waterfront views over the harbor are dramatic and well worth the short drive from central Athens, and booking a table next to the sea is the recommended move from locals who have eaten here many times.

CTC Urban Gastronomy

A Michelin-starred restaurant in a neoclassical townhouse in Kerameikos, CTC is led by chef Alexandros Tsiotinis who approaches every plate as a blank canvas waiting to be adorned with something worth looking at before it is eaten, and who guides guests through an eleven-course blind tasting menu in what is described as a secret garden setting where French technique meets Greek soul in a way that is utterly unforgettable. The menu changes constantly and guests do not know what is coming until it arrives, but every course reflects seasonal Greek ingredients handled with a level of precision and intention that the city's traditional kitchens rarely attempt. A Michelin-starred gem in the heart of Kerameikos that rewards the visitor willing to surrender control of the evening to the kitchen.

Hytra

A Michelin-starred restaurant atop the Onassis Cultural Centre with panoramic views of Athens and the Acropolis, Hytra combines a setting that is genuinely one of the most dramatic in the city with inventive Greek dishes that merge tradition with contemporary technique. The degustation menu offers a complete journey through the kitchen's ambitions, the view is described consistently as stunning, and the overall experience of eating seriously ambitious Greek food with the Acropolis visible in the distance is one that people describe as a special occasion dinner worth planning a trip around. A FNL Best Restaurant Award winner and one of the most recognized kitchens in the Greek capital.

Ta Karamanlidika tou Fani

A combined deli, charcuterie, fromagerie, and restaurant in a renovated neoclassical building near Monastiraki that brings the tastes of Byzantine and Cappadocian Greece to the table, Ta Karamanlidika tou Fani preserves a culinary tradition carried by the Greek communities who moved to Athens from Anatolia after the population exchange of 1923 and specializes in artisanal cheeses, cured meats, aged hams, pastirma, sujuk, and the kind of hard-to-find regional dishes that almost no other restaurant in Athens attempts. Complimentary sliced beef pastrami and cubes of cheese arrive the moment you sit down, the aubergine in spicy Cappadocian sauce, stuffed vine leaves, pastirma pies with cheese, meatballs, baked eggs, Adana kebabs, and yogurt with quince marmalade for dessert all earn consistent enthusiasm, and seeing a long line of locals waiting outside is the most reliable indicator that something genuinely special is happening inside. With 13,347 Restaurant Guru reviews and a 4.7 rating it is one of the most loved restaurants in the city.

Klimataria

A family-run taverna near the central market that has been going strong since 1927, offering evenings of slow-cooked lamb, stuffed peppers roasted in an old brick-built oven, herby grilled meats, bread baked in a wood-fired oven, and house wine poured from carafes under a canopy of grapevines and decorative wine barrels, Klimataria is one of the oldest and most beloved traditional tavernas in the city and a place that earns never fails to satisfy designations from regulars who have visited many times and found every occasion consistently good. The tis oras grilled meat platter with biftekia, lamb chops, and pork chops is the signature order, the food is always well-cooked and portions are generous, and the live music program on select evenings and Greek dancing on Sundays make it an event as much as a meal.

Diporto

A no-frills basement taverna beneath the Varvakeios central market that represents Athens' oldest food culture in its most direct and unpolished form, Diporto is the place that every food-serious Athenian mentions when asked where to eat like a local, with a menu that changes daily based on what the market above it produced that morning, no written menu, no pretense, and a kitchen that has been feeding market workers, shopkeepers, and anyone curious enough to find the stairs going down for as long as anyone remembers. Wine comes from the barrel, the food is traditional Greek oven cooking at its most honest, and the experience of eating in a room where the 21st century has not noticeably intruded is one of the most genuinely Athenian things available to a visitor in the city.

Nolan

A Bib Gourmand-awarded restaurant that blends Greek and Japanese flavors into small dishes served as soon as they are ready in a format that rewards sharing and ordering widely rather than sequentially, Nolan is one of the most talked-about creative restaurants in Athens among food-minded visitors and locals who find the combination of precise Japanese technique and Greek ingredients a genuinely compelling rather than gimmicky proposition. The dishes served immediately from the kitchen as they are ready give each meal its own shape and pacing, the cooking is described as memorable and unique, and the overall energy and quality of the operation make it one of the more interesting dining experiences currently available in the city.

Kuzina

A restaurant near the Ancient Agora in Thissio with a top-floor terrace offering views of the Acropolis and the Temple of Hephaestus that is one of the most beautiful dining settings in central Athens, Kuzina blends Greek tradition with contemporary flair in a beautifully renovated mansion that combines old wooden floors with an industrial-chic interior and an open kitchen visible from the back of the room. The tuna tataki in orange-soy-wasabi sauce is outstanding, the lamb is a standout dish, the overall creative Mediterranean menu reflects a kitchen that takes the Greek pantry seriously without losing sight of the pleasure of a well-made meal, and the terrace is one of the genuine special-occasion dining settings available in the city from April through October.

Conclusion

Athens in 2026 is a city where a two-Michelin-star tasting menu atop a cultural center and a no-frills basement taverna under the central market can both represent the best of what the city has to offer, and where neither needs to apologize for what the other is. The Greek capital is no longer a pit stop between the airport and the islands. It is a full dining destination where the oldest and newest ideas about what Greek food can be are both being pursued with genuine seriousness, and where a week of good eating would barely scratch the surface of what is available.