Aschimopapo (The Ugly Duckling) — Restaurant in Athens

I don’t even know how to begin! Any good expectations I had when choosing to go to dinner at Aschimopapo were exceedingly exceeded. The place is really cool, cool, full of personality. The service is beyond friendly: the owner, despite not speaking any language other than Greek (which unfortunately we don't speak), was incredible and managed to explain a lot to us about this traditional and familiar environment, full of musical culture. The food… Well, the food is really impossible to describe in words. We ordered feta with spicy tomatoes, pork strips and village sausages and I don't remember ever eating anything so tasty in my life. We were completely satisfied but as we were so enchanted with the experience, we decided to order another meat pastrie recommended by the owner. The house white wine, perfectly chilled for Athenas' great heat, was excellent, and at the end she even treated us to dessert. I really hope to have the opportunity to return to this place once again in my life. Thank you very much, you opened my Greek season...

A jewel, hidden in the Petralona area, just 500m from Acropolis and the ancient agora of Athens. A place full of history from the 60’s, that can be seen on the walls: articles from newspapers about movies, contributions from famous actors of the era, posters and paintings from theatricals and rare musical instruments like a “laterna”, brings strong emotions. This place was the house of an actor, that due to his difficulties to feed his family from acting, he converted it into a taverna. Now it’s managed by his daughter. The food is great, well cooked with traditional ingredients and with care, combined with very good house wines and well selected Greek contemporary music, made an expirience that I missed for years. Well done Mrs. Charoula (that’s the name...

It is a hidden traditional restaurant in Petralona. I found it while I was looking for some parking space and seemed to me as a nice alternative place to have dinner with friends. I expected to taste much more traditional or at least "home-cooked" tastes in the restaurant. Definitely the food was fair enough and the prices were normal. The personnel was also extremely polite and welcoming! We were treated with halvas (traditional sweet) and raki (traditional drink from Crete). The place was also very quiet and relaxing. Something I did not like is that I saw some of the staff smoking near the kitchen. In overall I had a nice experience in the restaurant but I am not sure if would...