Ambakas @ Gazi

Friday night out in Gazi.

I intended to try Asty 68, but found it closed due to summer vacation.

Passing in front of Gazohori which is expanding even more (it looks more like an "area" than just a "place"), we arrived at a relatively new Cretan restaurant, Ambakas, which was empty at 8 o'clock in Friday evening. We saw only 3 other patrons during 2 hours we were there.

It is a small restaurant, a half of the tables were on pedestrian walkway and the other half inside. We seated outside. It is one of the back streets of Gazi and I don't think it is particularly attractive. The interior decor looked much better, but good Greeks should eat al fresco.

On seating, they brought us a bottle of mineral water, two small glasses of tsipouro, and this dip & dakakia (small Greek rusks).

And pieces of bread in a bag. These looked like home-made.

The menu is printed on the paper that is used as place mat. There are a wide variety of Cretan appetizers (mezedes). Besides, there are 5 or 6 salads, about 10 Cretan main dishes, and also grill dishes. I don't think there was any fish, but there were many dishes that did not contain any meat. I would say that there is a good range of choice.

We ordered only 3 dishes, but could not clear them all.

First, Cretan salad, which was a variation of Greek salad.

What is Cretan about? It contained mitzithra instead of feta and there were some pieces of small dakos. And small & dry Cretan small olives. Vegetables were crunchy and I liked it, although 6.50 Euro looked a bit expensive.

After a while, we got the appetizers. This is mixed appetizers for 2.

The presentation was really beautiful and the price also really good. I cannot say that I liked all of them, but some of them were quite sympathetic. I liked particular the keftedes made from fava. It cost only 10 Euro and we got stuffed only with these and bread. Very good buy.

But we had already ordered one main dish; "Cretan" pork souvlaki (9 Euro).

I thought that the souvlaki should be a safe choice, but but I was wrong. The pork had unpleasant smell of pork and contained some sinew-ish hard parts. The potatoes were either double-fried or boiled before frying.

After the meal, they offered us two pieces of cakes on house.

These were like ravani, but contained green grapes. Very good.

With a bottle of Alfa beer (3.10 Euro), the total bill is 30.60 Euro. The food did not convinced me totally, but for this price I might come back to try something else.

Ambakas (Άμπακας)
Ikarieon and Orfeos 34
Gkazi, Athens
Tel. 6949 731675


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Zafiro @ Attiko Alsos, Athens

To avoid the heat of the empty Athens, we went to Attiko Alsos, also known as Alsos Galatziou. We have never been here before.

Just before arriving at the park, we saw many Ethiopians evidently coming out from the church. I knew that there is an Ethiopian community in Patission area, but not this one. Impressed. I hope they too open a restaurant; I love Ethiopian food.

Anyway, Attiko Alsos is a park that occupies a hill in Galatzi area and there are lots of trees.

Inside the park, there is small football court and some playing tools for children. It seems to be an ideal place for a family picnic.

What do you think this box is?

This is supposed to contain bags for dog-droppings. There are many of these in the park. Ok. All are empty and, considering the current economic climate, there is very little chance for these to be refilled, but I have never seen such an attempt in Athens and surprised.

There are some points in the park where you can command panorama of Athens. In the photo below, you can see Lycabettus Hill and Acropolis.

Just in front of the cinema "Theo Aggelopoulos", there is a cafeteria called Zafiro.

There is a good view of Athens. The prices are rather expensive, if not exorbitant. It serves mezedes after 7 o'clock in the evening. The prices of mezedes looks all right, maybe to balance that of the drinks.

I asked a diet coke. To our surprise, the waiter told us they don't serve either Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola. What they have is Epsa Cola (3.60 Euro).

We ordered also a club sandwich.

It contained poor quality ham, cheese, boiled chicken breast, bacon, lettuce and tomatoes. Very average, if not under average. The fried potatoes were fresh, but undercooked. Price 8.60 Euro.

The place is supposed to have WiFi, but when we asked the waiter the password, he told us that he did not know and he did not want to ask the other staff because nobody knew it. How strange.

We want to go back for a light meal in the evening without expecting great food or great service. Just for the view.

Seaside Lunch in Petalidi

On our way home, we stopped at Petalidi for lunch, because it sounded attractive to eat in front of the sea one last time.

We saw an Italian and a taverna, and Greek Husband chose the latter in the photo below. Anyway, later we so other restaurants on the seaside and there is a plenty of choice here.

Bright blue chairs.

The taverna was called Galazia Akti and had small fish as well as meat and stewed/oven-cooked food (magirefta).

We ordered a feta-free version of Greek salad which was excellent with fresh vegetables.

And fried potatoes. Potatoes absorbed a bit too much oil, but very good nevertheless. No bad smell of oil.

Fried squids were rather disappointing, being so thin and lacking in flavour.

On the other hand aubergine paptsakia (halved aubergines with meat sauce and white sauce baked in oven) were much better. Aubergine was meltingly soft and sweet.

With a coke and a bottle of beer, the bill was around 27 Euro, if I remember well. We did not leave tip, as they did not give us receipt.

In front of the restaurant, there was this strange section of seafront where it looked as if the cement block fell down.

There was quite a lot of fish and crabs around here and we enjoy watching them.

Taverna Dionysos @ Finikounda

We have been to Messinia, Peloponnese for 5 days.

We were ones of those lucky "30%" of Greeks who could go for a summer vacation trip and more lucky "7%" of the Greeks who could afford to pay for accommodation.

Of course these statistics are bullshit. It does not explain at all how our neighbourhood in Piraeus is so empty and almost all the people around us go to (or have been to) somewhere for vacation, either because they have money to pay or they have a country house(s) to go.

Anyway, about the historical sites, beaches and cultural monument, I am going to write in the Gate to Greece website. Here I write only some random info.

During our trip we stopped at Finikounda (In Greek, it is spelled Φοινικούντα, and nt is pronounced "d") in the evening for dinner, because we had received a tip that Finikounda has pretty busy night life.

And it was true.

Finikounda itself is a small village. I imagine at least some of the people in Finikounda in the evening should have come from the hotels in the neighbouring areas like Koroni and Methoni, like ourselves.

We did not know how Finikounda was like and drove into the central Finikounda (we did not intend to, but it wasn't prohibited either). Having got scared after running amongst the pedestrians, we parked at a paid parking (2 Euro for as many hours you like), but we could have parked just outside the centre, for wherever you park, the centre is probably not very far.

As so many of the small village centres, there is only one main street in Finikounda which runs along the coast like. In the central part of the main street there are souvlaki places and cafeterias and tavernas are toward the both ends of the street.

The most famous one is Eleni's in the photo below. This restaurant should command a nice view in the afternoon and there were really many people. The menu looked interesting..

But we were put off by the live Greek music being played. We were not in the mood to listen to Monastiraki-like Greek folk music so we settled in a nearby taverna-psistaria called Dionysos which had some tables along the seafront.

Dionysos has grilled meat dishes, stewed food (magirefta) as well as small selection of seafood/fish.

As starters, we ordered tzatziki and horta (Vlita) which were both very nice.

I got rolled chicken staffed with vegetables and cheese.

It was somewhat salty, but the chicken tasted pretty good.

Greek Husband got an mussakas in earthenware.

He liked it very much, while I thought that it was overcooked. (You might ask what I mean by "overcooked", to which I answer that, as the Greeks use veal/ young beef - real beef is very rare here - to make meat sauce, it does not stand to be stewed many hours).

The portion size of moussakas was enormous and it would have fed both of us.

At the end they offered us 4 small pieces of watermelon.

Together with a half kilo of white wine (we liked it) and a bottle of fizzy water, the total bill came to 27.30 Euro.

The bill breakdown is as follows:

White wine (500 ml. ca.) 3 Euro
Fizzy Water 2.50 Euro
Tzatziki 3 Euro
Horta 3.80 Euro
Chicken 6.50 Euro
Moussakas 7.50 Euro
Bread 1 Euro

We would be happy to return, when we happen to be in Finikounda. Besides some of the people around us were evidently returning patrons, which means that this place probably is not a bad choice in Finikounda.

After the dinner I stopped at a ice cream palour.

I don't have the name because he did not give me the receipt.

I found it too sweet, but evidently I have strange taste as far as ice cream concerns. One scoop cost 1.50 Euro.

And here are some pages about Messinia in Gate to Greece.

What I ate in Skyros

It has been some time since the last time I posted. I was making pages on Gate to Greece website about Skyros where we went in early July.

Here I would like to show you some of the food we ate during the trip.

The first day we arrived, we went a bit crazy and entered an Italian restaurant called Marco Polo. The owner chef is an Italian and serves classic Italian dishes like pasta and pizza as well as some Greek and fusion dishes like these.

Here are devil's kebabs. The waiter tried to explain us why it was named so, but we did not really understand.

Judging from the texture of the meat, it was mixed with soda powder. This is a way to treat meat in East from Turkey to China, but not in Greece. I guessed it was inspired by Turkish Kebabs. They might not look good, but tasted pretty good.

And here is orange flavoured chicken tandoori. I don't think it was cooked in tandoor oven, but the chicken breast was treated with tandoori spice.

Unfortunately it arrived undercooked (the waiter told us that they mixed up the order and had to cook this dish in a hurry), so we sent it back to the oven. Regardless of the hiccup, it tasted interesting and I liked it.

This restaurant is relatively expensive for the island (the above dishes are 10 Euros each), but, if you get tired of Greek food (or even not), that is the place to go. I do not know the exact address, but it is located in the central square of Chora and it won't be difficult to find.

Our pension did not serve breakfast, so we had to go out to get something. This is an apple pie from a local bakery and we brought our bread to a nearby cafeteria. The pies and croissants were all right, if not anything noteworthy.

Here is a calorie bomb called "ladopita (meaning oil pie)" which is evidently a well-known local dish. Actually this sort of thing is eaten also in other places in Greece and called variously, but I have never seen it in tavernas.

It is really huge, about 30 cm in diameter. Typically it is eaten with a local soft fresh cheese called ksynotyri, which looks exactly like yoghurt. Depending on the recipe, the cheese might be already in the pie before being fried. On this occasion the restaurant was running out of ksynotyri, so we ate it with feta. The bread was very nice, but it wasn't anything I can eat with other dishes. However, you should try one at least once while you are in Skyros.

During the vacation, we eat the lunch so late that we cannot really eat dinner. Once we stopped at this souvlaki place called Mantzourana, near the central square. It serves pretty good souvlaki. It has also tables on the 1st floor terrace and you can eat souvlaki looking the people go up and down the main street.

In Skyros, the portions are quite large. These are biftekia served at a taverna Agios Petros on the road to Agios Petros Beach.

It is supposed to be for 1 person, but it could easily feed two.

On the occasions that we could not eat proper meal, we stopped at an ice cream place called Faltaina.

It has an interesting range of flavours and tastes good. This is another thing you should not miss while you are in Skyros. There is one outlet in central Chora and another shop/factory on the road just before entering Chora.

This was the last meal we had in Skyros, which unfortunately wan't good. On the last day morning, we went to a beach bar called Juicy in Molos beach. It is open from the morning and we had a savory crepe as snack. The quality of cheese was low and tasted bitter somehow.

It is a nice beach bar, but do not order savory crepe.

That is it about Skyros, but I would like to add also a baklava that we ate in Kymi Port of Evia.

Evidently Kymi is well known for baklava and there were signs everywhere (not so much in the port, but in the town). The upper crusts were very crunchy and the lower layers were gooey. We don't know if this is the typical balkava of Kymi as we ate only at one shop. Dried figs seem to be another famous local produce.

And to those who are wondering why we did not eat fish at all, I would like to inform that Skyros is well known for husbandry. There are fish restaurants, but the locals seem to eat more meat than fish. Particularly goats and sheep are local speciality.

So that is it for Skyros food. To be honest, except for the first restaurant Marco Polo, the food was not more than "good". Based on what I ate, I won't expect exceptional gourmet experience in Skyros.