Diane Kochilas and I were early contemporaries—I’ve known her for at least 30 years, and I would never do anything Greece-related without talking to Diane first. She’s a native-born American with deep roots in Greece, and lives there most of the time—these days, in Athens. She’s probably the world’s leading expert in Greek food who writes in English, and has a deep understanding of Greece and its culture. Want a blast from the past? Here’s Diane and me cooking together for the New York Times. Okay, on to Diane. The following excerpt and recipes are from her new book, Athens: Food, Stories, Love. – Mark
Athens has grown. Or, rather, it has grown up. For the first time in the three decades I’ve called this fascinating city home, I sense something in the air that’s changed. Call it confidence. Call it a city finally comfortable in its own skin. A city finally at ease with what my youthful arrogance all those years ago, under the city’s ancient temple, devoted to wisdom and aglow under the moon, couldn’t put into words: Athens’s most defining character trait is the natural, underlying, existential angst that has shaken its modern self, since its founding as the new Greek capital in 1830. Athens is a city that will always grapple with the towering reminder of its ancient glories, with every new generation forced to reckon with their contemporary city’s imperfections, made more obvious by the daily grind and the constant, if romanticized, reminder of what most of us perceive as a perfect past.
One needs time to understand Athens. For visitors, Athens once represented nothing more than a twenty-four-hour stopover en route to major tourist destinations like Santorini and Mykonos. But today the city is a great paradigm for good Mediterranean living and eating. In the last few years, it has become a hub for longer stays, with visitors increasingly interested in more than its famous antiquities. It’s also become an amazing food city, an international food city, where Greek and global flavors mesh seamlessly, where the next generation of chefs, nurtured on the internet, have a much more fluid sense of Greekness when it comes to the food they’re creating.
Side by side with tradition are all the new and exciting ingredients, flavors, and techniques being co-opted by both professional and home cooks in Athens. The local city press runs stories on the best Georgian flatbread makers and where to eat the best African, Asian, or Indian cuisine in the city, for example.
Athenian home cooks and chefs alike are managing an incredible balancing act, upholding and respecting their deeply rooted traditions, but also embracing the excitement of new ingredients and global trends. Some of the best Greek restaurant food in Athens is hyphenated, as in Greek-Japanese, one delicious example. Some of the most traditional dishes have been transformed to a more global Greek aesthetic. Classics like melitzanosalata, the roasted eggplant dip, for example, pop up all over the place, laced with new flavors such as miso and rice vinegar. These are but two of countless ways that the vibrancy of Athens, and its newly minted international face, is driving a delicious revolution in the kitchen.
Greek Salad Crepes
It doesn’t take a huge leap of faith to marry the basic ingredients of a robust Greek salad with a delicate crepe. This easy recipe might just become your new favorite quick breakfast.
Bean Soup Sandwich
Athens has seen a huge explosion in street food concepts these past few years. Many are skewer-centric, such as souvlaki and gyro every which way, but there are now countless offerings both Greek and international. One of the more creative stops is a place I stumbled upon in the northern suburb of Agia Paraskevi, called Oursa, the Greek word for “bear.” A bear is the defining animal of northern Greece whence chef-owner Dimitris Stratis hails. This little place is basically a glorified shack or canteen, where he combines comfort with convenience by serving up traditional Greek recipes like oregano chicken, pork and celery, and even the classic Greek bean soup between the bread. He has a penchant for pickled veggies and hot peppers, so tradition is spiced up at Oursa. This recipe is inspired by one of his delicious offerings. Beans on toast, move over!
Chickpea Soup That Emulates Diporto’s Legendary Revithada
In case Diporto does not survive gentrification, here is my version of Barba Mitso’s recipe for the absolute best chickpea soup in Athens. It’s epic.
From Athens: Food, Stories, Love, by Diane Kochilas. Copyright © 2025 by the author, and reprinted with permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
Diane Kochilas is a New York Times bestselling author and the host of My Greek Table on Public Television. She runs the Glorious Greek Kitchen cooking school on Ikaria, as well as food and culture tours throughout Greece. She is the author of thirteen books on Greek and Mediterranean cuisine.
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