Best Restaurants in Athens, Greece: The MICHELIN List, the 1887 Basement and Where to Actually Eat

MICHELIN-starred restaurants in Athens

Greece has twelve MICHELIN-starred restaurants, and every one of them is in Athens or its coastal suburbs. That sounds like a boast until you realize it also means the rest of the country, islands included, currently has none. Athens is not competing with Santorini here. It is playing alone.

One restaurant holds two stars: Delta, at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center in Kallithea, which also holds a MICHELIN Green Star for sustainability. The other eleven hold one star each.

A detail worth knowing before you book, because nobody selling you a tasting menu will mention it. Spondi opened in 1996 and became the first restaurant in Greece to win a MICHELIN star, in 2002. It won a second in 2008 and lost it again in 2022, so it is a one-star restaurant today, as both the official Athens city guide and its Wikipedia entry record. You will still find it described as two-star in a great many places online, including places that ought to know better. (I will not name them. I have made worse mistakes, and at least theirs is in writing.)

The guide itself has been in a strange pause. There was no separate Athens selection in 2025, and per Greek City Times, MICHELIN is replacing it with a nationwide Greece guide arriving in the second half of 2026, expanding to Thessaloniki and Santorini. So the list above is the last word for now, and it is about to stop being the last word. If you are reading this in a year, check the city guide again before you quote me at a dinner party.

One practical note: Pelagos and Patio are both in Vouliagmeni, which is a lovely 40-minute drive down the coast and not a place you stumble into after the Acropolis. Botrini's is in Chalandri, to the north. Book those, then book the taxi.

Where to eat in Athens, by neighborhood

Athens rewards picking a neighborhood over picking a restaurant. The city is dense, the good areas are walkable, and the difference between a great dinner and a tourist-menu dinner is often two streets rather than twenty euros.

• Pangrati. Residential, unhurried, and the best value in the city for a serious meal. It somehow holds two starred restaurants and a row of neighborhood tavernas on the same walk. Start here if you only have one night.
• Koukaki. Just south of the Acropolis Museum, so you get the location without the Plaka markup. Lots of small places with no website, which in Athens is a feature.
• Psyrri. The loud one. Modern Greek cooking, late souvlaki, seafood, and the highest density of places still serving after midnight.
• Plaka. Beautiful, ancient, and the most likely place to be handed a laminated menu with photographs on it. There are genuinely good tables here, including a starred rooftop, but you have to aim.
• Kolonaki. Smart, expensive, and home to one of the oldest dining rooms in the city.
• Metaxourgeio and Kerameikos. The formerly rough ones, now where a lot of the interesting kitchens have moved.

The rule of thumb that has never failed me: if the tables are full of people speaking Greek at 10pm, you are fine. If the tables are full at 7pm, you have found the tourist shift. Athens eats late, and it is not being difficult on purpose.

The oldest tavernas in Athens

This is the part of Athens dining that no other European capital can match, and it costs almost nothing. Several of the best rooms in the city have been open for roughly a century, and they are still neighborhood restaurants rather than museums with a kitchen attached.

Diporto Agoras, near the Central Market, has been serving since 1887. The name means two doors, which is the only signage it has ever bothered with: two battered doors and two sets of steep steps down into a basement of wine barrels. There is no menu. Someone tells you what there is, which is usually chickpeas, fish and a salad, and then you eat it. As the Greek Gastronomy Guide records, it has fed market porters, fishmongers and greengrocers in shifts since before the modern Greek state had electricity. It is the single most Athenian hour you can buy.

Filippou in Kolonaki opened in 1923 as a plain taverna with barrels and a dirt floor, and has spent a century quietly becoming the neighborhood's living room. Culinary Backstreets describes what it now does best, which is mageirefta: the slow-cooked, room-temperature Greek home dishes such as moussaka and pastitsio that restaurants aimed at visitors almost never do properly.

Karavitis in Pangrati has cooked since 1926, with a courtyard, house wine from the barrel and a bekri meze that regulars order without looking up. Klimataria on Plateia Theatrou has poured since 1927 and still runs live rebetiko most nights, which is either the highlight of your trip or a 40-minute commitment you did not plan, depending on your energy.

What to actually order in Athens

Two words save most visitors from a mediocre week. Mageirefta are the dishes cooked in the morning and served warm or at room temperature: gigantes, briam, lamb with lemon, stuffed vegetables. They are the real food of the city, and because they are not grilled to order, they are the thing a tourist restaurant is least likely to do well. Ouzeri or mezedopoleio on a sign means small plates to share, at which point you should stop trying to order a main course per person and simply keep pointing until someone stops you.

Souvlaki is a late-night food and a two-to-four euro food, and you should never pay restaurant prices for it. The lamb chops, paidakia, are ordered by weight rather than by piece, so a kilo between two people is normal and is not the mistake it sounds like. Greek coffee arrives with the grounds still in it. Do not drink the last centimetre, unless you want your fortune read, in which case do.

How to eat out in Athens

• Book the starred restaurants, ignore the rest. Delta and Spondi want reservations weeks out. A taverna in Pangrati will look at you strangely if you call ahead for two.
• Dinner starts at 9pm. Kitchens are open earlier, but you will be eating alone. A 10pm table is completely normal.
• Bread and cover. Most tavernas add a small per-person charge for bread and service. It is one to two euros, not a scam, and it is on the menu.
• Tip lightly. Rounding up, or five to ten percent for a real meal. Greece is not the United States and nobody is waiting for twenty.
• The metro is better than the taxi for anywhere central, and much worse than the taxi for Vouliagmeni. Plan the coast as its own evening.

If your trip continues to Italy, see the best food in Rome, or read which city has the most MICHELIN stars. Every other city is on the destinations page.

Searching for Athens restaurants? Add Greece

A search for restaurants in Athens can quietly return results from the American South, because there is an Athens in Georgia, home of the University of Georgia, with a downtown restaurant scene and a restaurant week of its own.

Counting by phrase rather than by result: of 50 common search phrases combining Athens with restaurants, worth about 39,000 searches a month between them, at least 12 phrases and around 21 percent of that volume are about somewhere other than the Greek capital. Most point to Athens, Georgia. The rest are Athens, New York, and a restaurant in San Diego with Athens in its name. That 21 percent is a floor, not an estimate: it counts only the phrases that are unambiguously about somewhere else, so the true share is higher.

The fix is one word. Add Greece to the search, or search for a neighborhood such as Pangrati or Koukaki by name, and the map stops sending you to a college town 5,000 miles away.

Best restaurants in Athens, Greece: common questions

What are the best restaurants in Athens? For fine dining, two-star Delta in Kallithea, then the one-stars: Spondi and Soil in Pangrati, Hytra, The Zillers in Plaka and Tudor Hall on Syntagma. For a classic Athenian meal, Diporto near the Central Market, Filippou in Kolonaki or Karavitis in Pangrati.

How many MICHELIN-starred restaurants are in Athens? Twelve, which is every starred restaurant in Greece. One holds two stars, Delta, and eleven hold one.

Does Spondi have two MICHELIN stars? Not any more. Spondi held two from 2008 until 2022 and holds one today. It was the first restaurant in Greece ever to win a star, in 2002.

Which neighborhood in Athens is best for food? Pangrati for value and quality together, Koukaki for eating well near the Acropolis, Psyrri for late nights. Plaka is the prettiest and the easiest to eat badly in.

What time do people eat dinner in Athens? Late. Nine in the evening is early and ten is normal, especially in summer. Tavernas that are full at seven are full of visitors.

Is Athens expensive for eating out? No, by western European standards it is cheap, and even the starred restaurants are reasonably priced next to their equivalents in Paris or London. A taverna dinner with wine runs well under what the same evening costs in Rome.