Conduct Your Own Self-Guided Athens Food Tour

There are food tours aplenty in the city of Athens and if you’re looking to rock up and be shown the best places by locals, it’s often more than worth the price you pay.

Here’s a few top rated tours:

• Street Food Tasting Tour
• Gourmet Food Tour
• Food and Wine Tasting Tour at Night

However, sometimes I don’t love the constraints of a tour and want to take things a bit easier – and often with a beer in hand throughout! And so why not conduct your very own self guided food tour instead?

Yes, you’ll need to do some research before you go but let me give you a few foods to look out for and then it’s up to you google away and find where you want to go, or simply happen across them:

• Baklava – Ground nuts and honey layered in flaky filo pastry
• Bougatsa – Greek breakfast pastry with semolina, custard, cheese or minced meat between layers of filo
• Choriatiki – The classic Greek salad consisting of feta, tomatoes, cucumber, olives and oil
• Dolmades – Minced meat wrapped in vine leaves
• Loukoumades – Deep fried dough soaked in sugar
• Mousakka – Aubergine, minced beef, tomatoes, bechamel sauce and topped with a layer of cheese
• Saganaki – Salty fried cheese
• Souvlaki – Grilled meat often served in a wrap
• Spanokopita – Greek savoury spinach pie that often also contains cheese
• Straggisto – Strained yoghurt – what many of us would call ‘Greek Yoghurt’
• Tzatziki – Yoghurt with cucumbers, garlic, salt and olive oil

As for drinks, these are some Greek beers:

• Alpha
• Fix
• Mythos
• Volkan

And here’s some more drinks to keep an eye out for:

• Mastica – liquour seasoned with mastic
• Ouzo – Anise flavoured aperitif
• Rakomelo – Raki and honey digestive spirit traditionally used as a home remedy
• Sahlep – hot milky drink popular in the winter months that’s also popular in Turkey. This one isn’t alcoholic!

You can also take a look at my food and drink recommendations of Athens here too.