{"id":187685,"date":"2010-01-16T10:43:30","date_gmt":"2010-01-16T15:43:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.skyscrapercity.com\/showthread.php?t=1046363"},"modified":"2010-01-16T10:43:30","modified_gmt":"2010-01-16T15:43:30","slug":"restaurants-athens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/187685","title":{"rendered":"Restaurants – Athens"},"content":{"rendered":"
I couldn’t find any existing thread so I start this one for restaurant reviews …<\/p>\n

\nMellilotos Restaurant, Athens<\/font><\/b>
\nAs reviewed in the New York Times, January 17, 2010
\nBy Charly Wilder<\/i><\/p>\n

This family-run, weekday-only restaurant specializing in organic dishes<\/b> opened last July in the lobby of a commercial building just off Syntagma Square. But you\u0092ll forget about the narrow restaurant\u0092s meager d\u00e9cor when you take your first bite of the salmon baked in paper and topped with finely chopped fennel, leek, dill and celery root, in a delicate reduction sauce made from spinach and a tree resin called mastika (12 euros, or about $17 at $1.40 to the euro).<\/p>\n

Konstantinos Siopidis, the 38-year-old chef, created the dish five years ago for his wife, Despina Kouklinou, 33, who now runs the restaurant while her husband, her mother and her younger brother do the cooking. At the time, Mr. Siopidis was running the kitchen of an upscale Athenian restaurant, but he was continually frustrated when the owner insisted that he use canned goods and pre-prepared ingredients and serve food that was no longer at its peak of freshness. So the young couple began planning what would become Mellilotos.<\/p>\n

\u0093We decided to sell food how we like it and follow our philosophy,\u0094 Ms. Kouklinou said.<\/p>\n

All of the food at Mellilotos is fresh, free of preservatives and prepared to order \u0097 not a vegetable is cut beforehand. They don\u0092t use any frozen or canned ingredients, instead preparing their own broths and stocks using traditional preservation methods. Rather than buy from large distributors, the couple carefully select products from farmers \u0097 many of them friends or relatives \u0097 throughout Greece. Their cheese comes from a friend who raises goats on Amorgos Island, southeast of Athens. Ms. Kouklinou\u0092s godfather sends freshly bottled olive oil from his pesticide-free grove on the island of Kithira, and her grandmother sends beans, figs and grape leaves that she grows in her private garden in Macedonia.<\/p>\n

The bulk of the restaurant\u0092s business comes from delivery orders, and with so many hotels nearby, the daily rotating selection of dishes \u0097 like the fresh chickpea soup (6.50 euros), remarkably succulent beef roasted with zucchini in fresh tomato sauce (8.50 euros), or a macrobiotic salad with lentils, bean seedlings, cherry tomatoes, pickled peppers and a traditional salty yellow cheese called kefalotyri (6 euros) \u0097 offers visitors a tasty alternative to room service.<\/p>\n

Mellilotos, Xenofondos 15 (inside the lobby on left); (30-210) 322-24-58. Open Monday to Thursday, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.<\/b><\/p>\n

\n\"\"
\nThe chef, Konstantinos Siopidis, of Mellilotos.<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\"\"<\/p>\n

\nNew York Times article<\/b>
\nhttp:\/\/travel.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/17…tml?ref=travel<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I couldn’t find any existing thread so I start this one for restaurant reviews … Mellilotos Restaurant, Athens As reviewed in the New York Times, January 17, 2010 By Charly Wilder This family-run, weekday-only restaurant specializing in organic dishes opened last July in the lobby of a commercial building just off Syntagma Square. But you\u0092ll […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3179,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187685\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}