Cafes

Here’s what nobody told me before my first Athens trip: this city didn’t really do brunch five years ago. Weekends meant a freddo cappuccino and maybe a koulouri from a street cart. Then something shifted — a wave of Melbourne-inspired cafes, a couple of New York expats, and a generation of Athenians who decided that eggs Benedict and a €6 bloody mary on a Sunday sounds pretty excellent. Now Athens has a brunch scene that rivals cities three times its size, and the best part is that prices haven’t caught up. You can eat a full brunch spread for €12-18 in neighborhoods where the same meal would cost €35 in London or Brooklyn.

I’ll say this upfront: Greeks don’t just drink coffee. They live coffee. My first week in Athens I sat down at a cafe around noon, ordered a freddo cappuccino, and fully intended to leave after twenty minutes. I left at 4 PM. Nobody batted an eye. Nobody brought me a check. I’d accidentally discovered the entire point of Greek cafe culture — there is no rush, and that’s by design.