RFK Cuisine · Greek · Athens
Best Greek Restaurants in Athens 2026
Greek · Athens · 7 rooms ranked · Updated June 2026
Compiled by the Restaurants for Kings editorial team · Published June 20, 2026 · Updated June 20, 2026
Delta earned two Michelin stars and a Green Star in its very first evaluation — the first Greek restaurant ever to manage it, and proof of how fast Athens has caught up. Greece only joined the Michelin guide in 2021, and in a few short years the city has gone from a place of brilliant tavernas with no fine-dining ceiling to one with a two-star room, a clutch of one-stars, and a generation of chefs reworking Greek cooking without losing what makes it Greek: the olive oil, the wild greens, the seafood pulled from the Aegean that morning, the long, social meze table. Ranked below are the seven rooms that show the cuisine at its best, from a sustainability-driven tasting menu on the coast to a charcuterie counter in Psyrri, with the chef, the signature and the dish to order at each.
1.Delta
Greece's only two-star room, on the coast at the SNFCC; book it weeks out for the most ambitious Greek meal in the country.
Delta, inside the Renzo Piano-designed Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre south of the centre, is the only two-Michelin-star restaurant in Greece, and it earned both stars plus a Green Star in its first evaluation — a debut almost no kitchen anywhere has matched. Chef Georgios Papazacharias, who trained at three-star Maaemo in Oslo, cooks a creative, sustainability-led tasting menu rooted in Greek provenance, every ingredient traced to its grower or fisherman, plated with a precision that would not look out of place in Scandinavia. The dining room is sleek and glass-walled, looking out over the park and the sea. The tasting menu runs to the top of this list's range. Book several weeks ahead for a weekend seating. This is modern Greek cooking at its most ambitious, and the meal to build a trip around.
Reserve weeks ahead online; the seasonal tasting menu, the Greek-sourced seafood courses, the wine pairing, a sunset table.
2.Hytra
A one-star kitchen reinventing Greek classics on a rooftop; book the tasting menu for nouvelle Greek with city and sea views.
Hytra, on the rooftop of the Onassis Cultural Centre on Syngrou Avenue, is where Tasos Mantis has spent years reimagining the Greek canon as a refined tasting menu. Mantis trained as sous-chef to Peter Goossens at three-star Hof Van Cleve in Belgium, and he brings that discipline to dishes that start from something familiar — a Greek salad, a wild-greens pie, a classic seafood plate — and rebuild it as something lighter and more precise without erasing the flavour memory. The menu comes in eight or fourteen courses with Greek-wine pairings, and the rooftop room, glass-walled with the city below and the sea in the distance, is one of the better seats in Athens. Book a week or two ahead. Come for nouvelle Greek cooking with a real point of view and a view to match.
Reserve a week or two out; the eight- or fourteen-course tasting, the Greek-wine pairing, a rooftop table at dusk.
3.CTC Urban Gastronomy
The most personal one-star kitchen in Athens; book it for inventive modern Greek and a famous Greek-coffee dessert.
CTC Urban Gastronomy, on a quiet street in Ilisia, is the most personal of the city's starred rooms — a small, chef-driven space where Alexandros Tsiotinis cooks an inventive modern Greek tasting menu that reads like an autobiography in dishes. Trained in some of Europe's best kitchens, he works Greek ingredients into refined, sometimes playful plates, and the restaurant's signature dessert built on Greek coffee has become one of the most talked-about sweet courses in the country. The room is intimate and unshowy, the focus entirely on the cooking. The tasting menu sits in the middle of this list's price range, a genuine bargain for a Michelin star. Book a week or two ahead. Come for the cooking of a chef working without a net, in his own room.
Reserve a week or two out; the modern Greek tasting menu, the Greek-coffee dessert, the wine pairing.
4.Botrini's
A one-star kitchen rooted in Corfu and the Ionian; book it for refined Greek-Italian cooking from a chef-television fixture.
Botrini's, in the northern suburb of Halandri, is the restaurant of Ettore Botrini, a chef of Corfiot-Italian heritage who has become one of the most recognisable faces of Greek cooking through both his Michelin star and a long television career. His kitchen draws on the Ionian islands and his family's Italian roots — Corfu dishes like pastitsada and bourdeto reworked with fine-dining technique, pasta made in-house, Greek produce treated with a Mediterranean lightness. The room is contemporary and comfortable, the cooking confident and generous rather than austere. Tasting menus run in the accessible part of this list's range. Book a week ahead, longer for the weekend. Come for a one-star menu with a distinct regional accent you will not find in the city-centre rooms.
Reserve a week ahead; the tasting menu, the Ionian and pasta courses, the Greek-Italian wine list.
5.Varoulko Seaside
The seafood institution that won Greece's first-ever star; book a harbourside table for the country's benchmark fish cooking.
Varoulko Seaside, on the yacht-filled harbour of Mikrolimano in Piraeus, is the most important seafood restaurant in modern Greek history. Lefteris Lazarou won the country's first-ever Michelin star here in 2002 and held it until 2024, and even without the star today the cooking remains the benchmark: pristine Aegean fish and shellfish treated with restraint, the famous sea-urchin and monkfish dishes, everything built to let the catch speak. The setting is the draw as much as the food — tables at the water's edge, the boats rocking a few feet away, the sea air. This is Greek seafood at its most serious, in the place that proved Greek cooking could hold a star at all. Book a few days ahead, more in summer, and ask for a harbourside table. Come for the fish and the history in equal measure.
Reserve a few days out, harbourside table; the sea-urchin, the monkfish, the whole Aegean catch of the day.
6.Papadakis
Aegean island cooking from one of Greece's best-known chefs; book it for refined seafood in smart, central Kolonaki.
Papadakis, on a Kolonaki side street, brings the cooking of the Aegean islands into the centre of Athens. Argiro Barbarigou — born on Paros and one of the most recognised chefs in the country through her cookbooks and television work — runs a kitchen built on the food of the Cyclades: wild greens, sun-dried and cured fish, slow-cooked seafood, the gentle, olive-oil-led island cooking that is the soul of Greek food without the meze-house volume. Her astakomakaronada, lobster with pasta, is a signature, alongside seasonal small plates that change with the catch. The room is smart and calm, the location handy for a polished lunch or dinner near the museums and shops. Book a few days ahead. Come for island Greek cooking, refined but not reinvented, from a chef who knows it in her bones.
Reserve a few days out; the lobster pasta, the wild greens, the cured-fish meze, an Assyrtiko from the list.
7.Karamanlidika tou Fani
The city's best modern meze house, built around Greek cured meats; go for a long, low-cost spread of pastourma and small plates.
Karamanlidika tou Fani, on the edge of Psyrri, is the most enjoyable cheap meal on this list and the most authentically Greek way to eat in the city. It started as a deli of Greek and Constantinopolitan charcuterie — Fanis Theodoropoulos's cured meats, cheeses and pastourma (the spiced air-dried beef of the eastern Mediterranean) — and grew into a meze house where you sit among the hanging hams and graze through a long table of small plates with a carafe of wine or tsipouro. A Michelin Bib Gourmand for its value, it does the social, unhurried heart of Greek dining better than anywhere central, and a full spread comes in well under what one course costs at Delta. No tasting menu, no ceremony, just plate after plate. Go with friends, order broadly, stay late. Come for the meze meal that explains the whole cuisine.
Walk in or book ahead for groups; the pastourma, the cured-meat and cheese boards, a wide meze spread, a carafe of tsipouro.
How Athens eats Greek
Greek dining splits, like the city, between the new fine-dining world and the deep taverna tradition it grew out of. The starred rooms — Delta, Hytra, CTC, Botrini's — arrived only after Michelin came to Greece in 2021, and they take Greek ingredients and forms and refine them into tasting menus. Underneath sits the older, unkillable culture: the seafood houses of Piraeus and the coast, the meze tables, the neighbourhood tavernas where a long lunch dissolves into the afternoon. A real picture of Athens eating uses both — a tasting menu one night, a harbourside fish lunch and a meze table the next.
A few mechanics. Greeks eat late: lunch from two, dinner rarely before nine, and the meze table is built to linger over for hours. Wild greens (horta), olive oil, the day's Aegean catch and the long social meal are the constants across every price point. Tipping is modest — rounding up or roughly five to ten percent is normal, not expected on top of a service charge. The starred rooms book ahead; the tavernas and meze houses take walk-ins and reward spontaneity. Summer pushes everything outdoors and onto the islands, so the city's best seafood tables fill on warm evenings. For the rest of the city's tables by neighborhood and occasion, the Athens dining guide lays it out.
Where not to look for it
Skip these for serious Greek food
The taverna touts of Plaka and Monastiraki with laminated menus and waiters waving you in. The tourist blocks under the Acropolis serve a flattened, overpriced version of Greek cooking to people who will never come back. Walk to Psyrri for Karamanlidika, or to Piraeus for real seafood, instead.
Delta or Hytra for a casual, decide-on-the-night dinner. These are reserve-ahead, set-tasting-menu rooms. When you want excellent Greek food without the planning, the meze houses and seafood tavernas take walk-ins, and Papadakis can usually seat you for an à la carte Aegean meal at shorter notice.
Frequently asked
What is the best Greek restaurant in Athens?
Delta, inside the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, is the only two-Michelin-star restaurant in Greece and the headline modern-Greek meal in Athens, where chef Georgios Papazacharias cooks a sustainability-driven tasting menu. For nouvelle Greek with a longer track record, Hytra at the Onassis centre and CTC Urban Gastronomy are the one-star references. If you want the soul of the cuisine rather than the tasting-menu version, the seafood at Varoulko and the meze at Karamanlidika are essential. Book Delta well ahead.
How much does fine dining cost in Athens?
Greek fine dining is a relative bargain. The tasting menus at the starred rooms run roughly 100 to 190 euros per person before wine — Delta at the top as the two-star, Hytra, CTC and Botrini's below it. A seafood dinner at Varoulko lands around 80 to 120 euros, an Aegean spread at Papadakis perhaps 40 to 60, and a full meze table at Karamanlidika well under 35 a head. For the level of cooking, Athens is one of the best-value capitals in Europe.
Which Athens restaurant has two Michelin stars?
Delta, at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre on the coast south of the centre, is the only two-Michelin-star restaurant in Greece. It earned both stars and a Green Star in its first evaluation, an almost unheard-of debut, and chef Georgios Papazacharias — who trained at three-star Maaemo in Oslo — runs a creative, sustainability-led tasting menu built on Greek provenance. It is the most ambitious Greek kitchen in the country. Book several weeks ahead for a weekend table.
What is a Greek meze meal?
Meze (mezedes in the plural) are the small shared plates at the heart of Greek eating — dips, cured meats, grilled vegetables, seafood, cheeses — ordered in waves and grazed over slowly with ouzo, tsipouro or wine. It is less a course than a way of dining, social and unhurried. Karamanlidika in Psyrri is the city's best modern meze house, built around Greek and Constantinopolitan charcuterie like pastourma. A meze table is the most authentically Greek meal in Athens, and the one locals default to.
Do you need a reservation for top Athens restaurants?
For the starred rooms, yes. Delta books several weeks ahead and is the hardest table in Greece; Hytra, CTC and Botrini's all take reservations and fill their best nights well in advance. Varoulko and Papadakis are easier but worth booking a few days out, especially in summer. Karamanlidika takes some bookings but is built for walk-in meze grazing. Set the fine-dining tables before you arrive, then keep the tavernas and meze houses for spontaneous nights.
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