Aialis @ Palaio Faliro

One Sunday, we went to a small 'Politiki' restaurant called Aialis in Palio Faliro. You would never learn the existence of such a small cafe/restaurant, if you do not live in the neighbourhood and if there were not internet. Of course this is a pure hypothesis and with the world wide web, you can learn quite a lot about a small restaurant in a town 50 (or 5000) KM away from you.

Indeed it was how I heard about this place. Although I work in the same neighbourhood, as it is located on a side road not visible from a major street, I would never have noticed it if I had not read about it before.

It is quite a small place, maybe with only 7 or 8 tables. In the decor wise, there is not much to say. It looks more like a kafenio than a taverna.

The menu is not long, but neither short for such a small place. We picked up some characteristic dishes.

OK. This one is the least characteristic. Fried potatoes. They look burnt, but tasted ok. Freshly cooked.

This is pastourmadopita (pita kaissarias). Inside the Turkish style fine fyllo, there are yellow cheese, tomato and pastourmas. It was tasty, but the core was strangely cold. This is of course a sign that it was frozen (or it was not well defrosted). I read in reviews of this place that the pastourmadopita here was freshly wrapped and fried. Well, our example showed me that it does not happen every day.

Cioban salad was OK. Nothing spectacular.

This is much praised manti. Each dumpling was very small and I admire the amount of labour put into it. My complaint was that the filling was so little that I scarcely tasted meat. It was fine as pasta dish, but not as meat dumpling dish.

The chopped and fried liver came at the moment when we finished most of the other dishes. It was unfortunate because I am the only person who eat liver (GH never touches liver). By consequence, I had to keep on eating fried (rather oily) liver alone when I was almost full.

Together with a bottle of pleasant Ionian beer (4 Euro), the bill came to 28 Euro. Not expensive, but, when I take into consideration the quality of the food and the service, I won't say it was cheap. It was just average.

Although I won't say that I disliked the place or I regretted to have tried it, one visit is probably enough for me.

Aialis-ΑΙΑΛΙΣ
Alkyonis 27, Palaio Faliro, 17561
Αλκυόνης 27, Π. Φάληρο, 17561
Tel. 212 1003311