I recently drew up a list for a friend who was visiting Athens from abroad, with suggestions on where to go for good fish, tavernas with amazing lamb chops, the nicest wine bars and so forth. When I reached the “souvlaki” category, however, I noticed the distances getting much further apart: One was in Nikaia, near Piraeus, another in Nea Erythraia, in Athens’ north… Thankfully there’s also Lefteris’ in the city center, making things decidedly easier. That said, my Austrian friend would probably stop for the first “best Greek gyros” he sees – and he’d probably love it too. Food just tastes better when you’re on holiday. But the question of how many really good souvlaki grill houses there are in Athens is a whole other matter.
It’s not just visitors who need a well-curated list of recommendations if they want to have a decent version of Greece’s “national street food.” Sure, if you’re happy with greasy pita and meat of questionable provenance, no problem – the choices abound. If you want something better, though, that’s when you need to start doing some research and resigning yourself to having to travel some distance. We didn’t have lists of the “Best Souvlaki in Town” in the past for the very simple reason that every neighborhood had at least one good souvlaki place. Now we need to go scurrying around the city, following up on promising leads, and especially if we’re after souvlaki with a bit more panache than the classic.
“It’s hard work doing everything properly by hand,” says Evangelia at Billy’s in Nikaia as she chops parsley and onions, filling a row of plastic bowls with mountains of the stuff. The grill cook had been there since early in the morning, deboning, cutting and marinating meat for the gyros rotisseries.
On another occasion, when I was visiting Ararat in the same neighborhood, Anna tried to explain why she insists on doing pretty much everything herself. “We get people coming in to learn the job every so often, and they get annoyed that I harp on about the onions. They want to get everything out of the way fast. I try to tell them that prep is where it all begins. You need to be careful about how you clean it, how to slice it, so it’s not too thick or so thin it becomes watery and squashy when you put it in the hot flatbread with the hot meat. Then there’s the kebab; you need to stay on top of it at all times. You can’t let your attention stray if you want it to come out just right,” says the Armenian cook. I don’t think there’s more than a couple of dozen souvlaki grill houses in the Greek capital that still pay attention to such details (obsessively? romantically?) and that take a craftsman’s pleasure in what they do.
I can recognize a souvlaki flatbread from Lefteris O Politis from a photograph. I recognize it for how the finely sliced onion is mixed in with the parsley, from the juicy red tomato and, mainly, for the fact that the pita is never pristine; it usually sags with juices from the gyros in one corner (every good gyros cook worth his salt knows to give the meat a little squeeze over the flatbread just before he deposits it, to release the juices).
In 20 years from now, when all these souvlaki ‘aesthetes’ start retiring, without leaving behind apprentices and others who share their values, will there be anyone left who remembers how to make a proper souvlaki?
How many souvlaki grill houses bother to check that every tomato is ripe, that the meat comes from a trusted source, that the ratio of ingredients is just so, that the charcoal is treated properly, that orders are made on the spot and not in advance, that the seasoning is fresh, etc, etc. All over the capital, we find thick pita flatbreads stuffed to bursting with pre-fried potatoes, frozen gyros, chicken bites wrapped in bacon, store-bought tzatziki and other such abominations. Another new trend seems to be the “open” souvlaki, meaning the flatbread is not rolled up but served flat. It’s everywhere. What’s happening? When did we stop loving real souvlaki?
Sure, keeping up standards takes more work and it costs more money than the easier route. But in 20 years from now, when all these souvlaki “aesthetes” start retiring, without leaving behind apprentices and others who share their values, will there be anyone left who remembers how to make a proper souvlaki? Burger restaurants seem to be popping up all over the place. Great! We love a good burger when it’s made with care and quality ingredients. Noma played a part by making burgers during the Covid lockdowns and breaking the chef’s taboo about this “fast food,” with the result being that now we have all sorts of great options in Athens that we didn’t have before. But when was the last time we heard about a good new souvlaki restaurant opening in a typical neighborhood? Good souvlaki takes effort – and our lists of recommendations are growing shorter.
This article originally appeared in Kathimerini’s food magazine, Gastronomos.
