Salonica Bougatsa in Psyrri

If you have ever been to Psyrri, you must have noticed that there is one pie shop in the central Piazza (which is called Plateia Iroon, Square of Heroes). I have seen it so many times, but never taken interest in it, because, when I go to Psyrri, I am either looking for a restaurant or a cafeteria, and never a pie shop.

What made me change the idea was a photo of the interior that I saw on Foursquare (which is, by the way, a terrific website/mobile software if you like to get information about restaurants and cafeterias; information there is not always credible, but it is definitely a happy hunting-ground).

It has a very strange shape and looks like a mixture of a medieval castle and an underground meeting hall of Mithraic cult.

I bought a portion of cheese bougatsa (savory) for 1.80 Euro. It is sold by a kilo, so the price is not fixed.

At the beginning, I found it too salty, but then got used to it. The fyllo was pretty good, although it wasn't so fresh when I bought it.

Apart from bougatsa (sweet cream or savory cheese), they sell also a variety of pies. When I saw, they had a spinach pie, koulou dough cheese pie, and small cheese pies (tyropitakia).

The staff was friendly and it is open 24 hours.

It is a nice spot for a snack when you are in the area.

Thessaloniki stou Psyrri - Η Θεσσαλονίκη στου Ψυρρή
Plateia Iroon 1, Psyrri, 10554 Athens
Πλατεία Ηρώων 1, Ψυρρή, 10554 Αθήνα

Roadside Bakery Giannoulaki

Heading toward Peloponnesus, we stopped at this roadside bakery called Giannoulaki. It is near Elefsina and just after Shell Gas station.

It is a huge shop and there is also a huge variety of sweets, breads, and snacks as well as coffees.

There is no place to sit down. A constant stream of people just bought whatever they wanted and drove away.

We bought a huge ham and cheese pie with tomato sauce for 2.20 euro. It was really big and tasty. Frappe was 1.50 Euro.

Well recommendable for snacking when you drive for Peloponnesus from Athens.

Georgiadis Bakery in Central Athens

At the last time I went to Athens (which was 18th February Saturday), passing by Kapnikarea Church...



I noticed that Georgiadis Patisserie/bakery opened a branch here.



Georgiadis is "the" patisserie/bakery of Varkiza.

In comparison to the shop in Varkiza, the range of items on sale is limited here, but still there are some interesting choices.

I tried pie with Philadelphia and ham.



The quality of the ham was obscure, but the pie crust was very nice.

The shop is no doubt a valid point to pick up your snack when you are in central Athens.

And another newly opened pie shop in central Athens called Chryso.



It is specialized in bougatsa, and except for the bougatsa with semolina custard usual in Athens, they have bougatsa with cheese or bougatsa with spinach.



After the snacking at Georgiadis, my stomak could not afford another pie, but on the next occasion, I would love to.

Tyropita @ Pasiakos Driver-In

We went for a trip to Pelion this summer. I have roughly finished the Pelion section of Gate to Greece. I still need to enrich the text parts, but skeleton is there.

So I start writing about the food we had during the trip just for my record.

The first food we had during the vacation was at a drive-in located somewhere near Lamia. The Drive-Inn was called Pasiakos Oasis. I have a vague memory that I had been to a Drive-In called Pasiakos near Lamia, but it was closer to Lamia than this "Oasis Pasiakos".



It was quarter to 13:00 and it was a perfect snacking occasion, as we preferred to have lunch in Pelion. This drive-in had a variety of Greek dishes ready to be served (self-service style), but we had just a piece of cheese pie and two glass of frappé.



This is not a bakery tyropita, but so-called "tyropita fournou (oven baked cheese pie)", tyropita typically cooked at home. Made with fyllo pastry and crumbled feta cheese.



It was rather cold and a touch under-done, but still it was a filling & tasty snack to get ourselves going for some hours more. If I remember well, it was about 3 Euro a piece.

Lena's Meat Pie @ Syntagma

Near Syntagma Square, there is a shop that looks like delicatessen called "Lena'" and I went in there for the first time the other day.

There is a small seating space, but it is so small that I won't even call it a cafe. It is rather a delicatessen with seating space. They sell cooled food as well as some grocery.

I did not have enough time to look around closely. I just bought a piece of pie and took off.

Here is a meat pie I thing was called kimadopita.



It cost €3.80. It might look expensive, but considering the size and quality, not really. If I ate the same pie in taverna, it would cost the same or more.

Obviously I did not eat in one go.



It contained small bits of meat (rather than minced meat), onion, cheeses and a lot of coriander.

If the shop is open until evening, I would buy some for dinner. Unfortunately, however, the business seems to close in later afternoon or early evening.

Apple Pie in Anaxos, Lesvos

Writing the Lesvos section in Gate to Greece, I came across this photo.



These are a chocolate croissant and an apple pie I bought from a bakery in Anaxos.

This bakery is excellent and has a lot of stuff; not only bread, but also cakes and ice creams. The price also was very good; a simple tyropita (cheese pie) cost 1 € only.

One of my pleasure during the trip is to have breakfast with freshly baked pastries. I have had many experiences of hotel breakfast, but for some reason it can never beat the breakfast in bakeries or with bread fresh from bakeries. When I am pressed by time, of course, I prefer to eat the breakfast at the hotel, but, otherwise, the hotel breakfast is better be avoided.

This bakery in Anaxos did not have eat-in tables, so one morning I went alone to buy breakfast bread, as Hubby sleep until late in the morning on his days off. There I spotted 'milopita' (apple pie). Apple pie being my favourite pie, I settled on it, but then I noticed a problem; the name plate of apple pie was put in front of bougatsa (cream pie), and the bougatsa plate was in front of apple pies.

When I asked the woman at the counter an apple pie, as I expected, she gave me bougatsa (usually, bougatsa looks quite different from milopita, but this bakery makes bougatsa with the same dough as apple pie's). I said her politely that it looked bougatsa to me. But she was quite confident that it was apple pie.

I repeated twice my doubt, but she insisted in her error. Being more confident than she was (because from the position I was standing at I could see the filling, while she couldn't), I paid the price, broke the bougatsa into two, and showed her that it was actually bougatsa.

Finally I won my apple pie.

I am sorry about the bougatsa that probably she should have to discard, but I really wanted apple pie, and I can tell you that it was worth the effort!

By the way, the chocolate croissant was for Hubby; he does not like the texture of cooked apple and always avoids apple pie.

Fresh Phyllo Pastry

For the first time I bought fresh phyllo pastry from pastry making shop in Piraeus.

You can tell them how many sheets you want, but I bought one ready-made packet which contains 6 sheets; I guess this is the standard number of phyllo sheets you need to make a pita.

He weighed the packed, as they sell by weight. It came to 1 euro for me, but the women who bought before me paid a bit more for the same size packet.


They were like sheets of paper.




They were extremely thin, thinner than the ones I have already seen.

I collected some usable things from the fridge and made a pita.



They came really beautiful: crispy and fragrant to the degree that I have never seen before. I did not know the fyllo pastry can be so good. I will definitely make it again!

Prasopita and Kritsinia

The other day, I brought back these items from a neighbourhood bakery.


This is prasopita. There were only two nistissimo (suitable for Orthodox fasting) pies: spanakopita and prasopita. Praso means leek.



The leek (which should have been cooked before putting into the pie sheet, otherwise the pie would be too soggy) was sweet and creamy. It was 1.30 euro.

Inspired by it, I later made prasopsomo (leek bread) which also came out pretty good.

These are kritsinia with seeds.



Kritsini is a very good snack during the fasting period. It is slightly sweet but not as sweet as cookies. It can be eaten as savoury as well. Seedy ones are my favourite.

The batton form one and the pretzl form one are made from different flour and I liked better the pretzl one. Maybe because batton one was slightly burnt.



I paid 2.70 euros for about 300 grammes. I said "300 grammes", but it looked the shop girl put bit more than that, so the price is probably about 8 euros a kilo.


Although these nistissimo stuff are pretty good, after almost 5 weeks without meat, I started to miss animal protein. I miss also milk, cream, cheese etc, although we had these occasionally. It is now 2 weeks left. mmmm.

One Afternoon in Glyfada

Hubby and I went to Glyfada last Sunday afternoon.

Glyfada is a distant suburb of Athens along the Attika coast. With is beach, harbour, clubs and restaurants, it is like a small resort for the Athenians.

This is Glyfada Harbour. The yellow building at the back in the centre is Saints Constantine and Helen Church. It is an eminent landmark of Glyfada.



I spotted a bronze bust and went close to see who he was, as I do always.

It was rather surprising to find the South American hero of independence, Simon Bolivar.

It is a gift from the Venezuelan Government and the Greek-Venezuelan citizens, but there was no mention of the tie between Bolivar and Glyfada or Greece. I thought, "periergo".

Being a resort, Glyfada is full of restaurants and cafes. This is one of the streets lined by restaurants. Here Mr. Dimitrakis - long-standing good friend of Hubby's dad - has his restaurant. We wanted to say hello, but did not find him. We will be back for a meal after Easter, as it is basically a meat restaurant.

Although we had already lunched at home, Hubby started to craving for something saying the sea opened his appetite. I have to keep him away from the sea.

As we needed to go back to Piraeus to meet up with friends, he stopped at Karaköy Güllüoglu - Istanbul based baklava shop that has branches in Sytagma and in Glyfada - and asked for something savoury.

By the way, the pistachio baklavadakia of Güllüoglu are heavenly, although they are more expensive than usual baklavadakia from average stores in Athens.

There were a choice between leek pie and cheese pie; Hubby picked up the latter. The nice lady of the shop offered us an explanation about it. It was hand-made according to the politiki (Constantinopolitan) recipe and really was called XXXXXXX (Turkish word that escaped my ear), Neropita in Greek translation, Water Pie in English.

The photo came up rather dark and I had to retouch it with Photoshop.

It contained feta cheese and phyllo pastry, but there was another unknown layer in between. It tasted like over-cooked buttery lasagna pasta. It should be some kind of a filling made with flour, milk and butter. It cost him €2, but we discovered something new.

There was a cat in front of the shop.

The was food left by the shop lady, but the cat was more keen on attracting her attention than to eat it. While she was attending us, it was gazing at her patiently.

Nistissimo snacks

We paid a visit to our bakery and I found some more nistissimo (suitable for Orthodox religious fasting) items.

First: Patatopita

There is mashed potato inside. Pie should be made with vegetable shortening (I think in any case that most of the snack pies sold at bakeries and pie shops are made with vegetable oil as butter is too expensive).

Carb+carb combination. Excellent.

Second: Almond, pistachio and sultana kritsini.

The bread-biscuit part is about equal as the nuts and sultana part.

I found interesting inclusion of pistachio.

Greek bakeries hold still more treasures to discover.

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By the way, yesterday I fried artichokes (aghinares) and king prawns (separately) in beer batter and they turned out to be excellent sarakosti food. They are added to my sarakosti cooking repertoire.

Olive and Tomato Pita

Greeks snack a lot and their favourite snacks are pies (pites), or, if you are British, 'pasties' might be a better word to convey the idea.

To give some examples, there are tyropita (cheese pie), loukanikopita (sausage pie), spanakopita (spinach pie, often including cheese), etc.

The other day, we discovered a barkery near our flat and decided to try, and to our joy they have some interesting pies.

From several interesting ones, we picked up one (well, actually Hubby picked up one, me not being pie lover). It was quite long; maybe near 30 cm.



Inside, there were olive paste and tomato (+ potato, I thought) paste in two individual lines.



Pie was fresh and fraky and the combination of fragrant olive and tangy tomato was a great idea.

Greeks tend to be very conservative and traditionalist in cooking and to find such a new / different things is often very difficult. We will be back to try some other things.