The 93 Best Places in Greece

White cliffs curve around a cove of pale pebbles and turquoise Ionian water, and the only way in is by boat or down a trail steep enough to discourage the casual visitor. That self-selection is the whole point. Fteri Beach on Kefalonia ranks second on World's 50 Best Beaches, and Europe's top-ranked beach overall, which means you won't be alone, but it's still quieter than anywhere that takes a shuttle bus.

Athens' first tequilaria, Barro Negro built its identity around agave spirits long before the city caught on. The shelves lean heavily toward tequila and mezcal, sipped neat or shaken into Margaritas, and the bar holds the world's first Paloma Embassy designation, which is as good a reason as any to start there. Ranked on both Europe's and the World's 50 Best Bars lists, it pairs a serious drinks program with tacos, making the argument that this was always a food group.

White thyme growing along the clifftops means you smell Porto Katsiki before you see it. A pebble beach at the base of towering limestone cliffs on Lefkada Island, it draws people willing to earn the view, since the descent is steep enough to thin out anyone who isn't sure they want to be there. The water runs a cold, improbable turquoise, and the general lack of sunbeds is, depending on your mood, either the whole point or a dealbreaker.

Two crescent beaches meet back to back on a narrow strip of land, which is the kind of geography that makes you wonder how anyone found it in the first place. The hike down from Afionas keeps the crowds honest, and the double bay on Corfu rewards the effort with calm, clear water good for swimming and snorkeling, steep green hills tumbling to the shore, and a quiet that feels increasingly hard to come by. Ranked among Europe's 50 Best Beaches.

Bronze bar, trees hanging from the ceiling, and a view straight out to sea: Delta earns its two Michelin stars in a fifth-floor dining room inside the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre. The chef runs a single 12-course creative Greek tasting menu, sustainability-driven and sourced from their own kitchen garden and local fishers. It is unambiguously a special-occasion place, and it looks the part without trying too hard.

The bioclimatic architecture lets Cretan light and mountain air do half the work before any treatment begins. This spa at a hillside resort outside Kissamos sits among olive groves with views toward the sea, and the whole philosophy runs on deliberate disconnection from screens and schedules. Vogue named it among the 100 best spas in the world. The team behind it traded a tech career for this, which explains why the antidote to overstimulation has been so carefully engineered.

A cocktail bar on Plateia Agias Irinis that takes its name as a manifesto: strip everything back and see what's left. What's left turns out to be drinks like a transparent Strawberry Bloody Mary made with what the menu calls "invisible strawberries," which is either a magic trick or a philosophy, possibly both. The room matches, minimalist and unhurried, with a sustainable ethos that doesn't make a fuss about itself. A Discovery pick from The 50.

A former school on the outskirts of Athens now houses one of the city's more personal fine dining rooms, where the menu moves between Corfu, Thessaly, and Tuscany as if the chef's biography is the tasting course. Ettore Botrini runs the kitchen, and the cooking has earned a Michelin star. There's a chef's table, an open kitchen, and outdoor seating when the weather cooperates. The menu comes in two set formats, with room to add on.

A tree-lined urban terrace draws the summer crowd to this Michelin-starred modern Mediterranean restaurant in Athens, though the softly lit interior holds its own through cooler months. Chef Alexandros Tsiotinis runs an eleven-course tasting menu whose dishes are kept secret until each one arrives at the table, a theatrical touch that somehow avoids feeling gimmicky. The cooking leans on classical foundations and quietly pulls them apart.

A digital code gets you through the front door, which sets the tone for what follows. Hervé is a Michelin-starred contemporary tasting-menu restaurant where a French chef folds French, Asian, and Italian ideas into a single, composed progression. Watch it come together from the counter, or take the patio when the weather cooperates. The tiled walls and natural stone keep things from feeling precious, even when the cooking clearly is.

Hytra sits inside the garden of the Megaron Music Hall, with a balcony that puts the Acropolis and the Athenian sky directly in front of you. This Michelin-starred modern Greek restaurant grows its own herbs and uses them in everything, including the cocktails. The kitchen leans into fine textures and careful plating, with tasting menus alongside à la carte, one menu going fully vegetarian. Dressy, unhurried, and committed to the view.

A glass floor panel reveals the ancient foundations of what was once Greece's first inn, which sets the tone for what follows at this Michelin-starred creative restaurant at the foot of the Acropolis. The chef draws from the restaurant's own farm and local producers for tasting menus named Genesis, Utopia, and the vegetarian Physis Vegan. Over 300 wine labels, plus cocktail and juice pairings, keep things occupied between courses.

The courtyard of a coastal hotel half an hour from Athens, draped in greenery and far enough from the city to feel like a different country. Patio is a tasting-menu restaurant where the chef runs his own farm, and the produce travels accordingly short distances. Modern Greek cooking with serious technique, a Michelin star, and at the end of the meal a pencil embedded with basil seeds, because sustainability should follow you home.

The terrace at this Michelin-starred restaurant in the Four Seasons Astir Palace faces the Aegean, which sets the table before the food arrives. Chef Luca Piscazzi runs a Mediterranean kitchen with Italian and French threads woven through it, drawing on local ingredients and a career's worth of island-inspired ideas. The tasting menu is the move if you want the full argument, but the à la carte holds its own.

Before the meal begins, a small presentation of aromatic herbs arrives at the table, many grown by the chef's father. Soil is a single-tasting-menu restaurant with a Michelin star, where the cooking leans hard into Greek landscape and seasonality. You can sit at the chef's table, in the lounge, or in the year-round winter garden. Tasos Mantis finishes certain dishes tableside, and the drinks pairing runs from wine to fresh juices and low-alcohol options.

Vaulted stone dining rooms and candlelit terraces a short walk from the ancient Panathenaic Stadium set the scene for contemporary French cooking that leans heavily on visual presentation. This is a formal, Michelin-starred restaurant with a tasting menu alongside à la carte, attentive service that the room practically insists upon, and a crowd dressed accordingly. Seasonal produce drives the menu, though certain luxury ingredients appear to have permanent residency.

A Michelin-starred rooftop restaurant perched above the Greek Orthodox cathedral with the Acropolis hanging in the background, which is not a bad place to eat dinner. The kitchen runs two tasting menus of contemporary Greek cooking, creative without abandoning the traditions that make Greek food worth the creativity. The wine list leans Greek, the setting leans theatrical, and the evening-only hours keep it from feeling like a tourist lunch stop.

Dinner on the seventh floor of the King George Hotel, with the Acropolis lit up across the rooftops and a pianist somewhere in the background, sets a scene that would feel theatrical if the food didn't hold its own. This fine dining restaurant earns a Michelin star through the chef's contemporary Greek cooking, a short à la carte and a tasting menu. The sommelier is quietly exceptional, the kind who reads the table before making a recommendation.

Odori built its reputation around vermouth at a time when Athens wasn't paying much attention to it, and the bar has been pulling that thread ever since. Large French windows open onto terrace tables, while inside golden counters, verdant wallpaper, and ornate birdcages create a room that feels like it belongs on a different continent. The drinks list roams through vermouth varieties and brands, including the bar's own, with an eye toward low-ABV and aperitif drinking.

A wood-fired oven anchors the menu at this contemporary Italian restaurant near the heart of central Athens, where the kitchen turns out handmade pastas alongside pizzas and meat dishes. The room spreads across three areas, including a terrace and a balcony good for cocktails when the evening cools. The kind of place that draws a broad crowd without trying too hard to please everyone, which is harder than it sounds.

The rooftop cocktail bar perched above the Monastiraki flea market with the Acropolis filling the horizon is doing a lot of heavy lifting on its own, but the menu still tries to keep up. Drinks are organized around ideas, love and hope and realism, which is either pretentious or charming depending on how many you've had. The spirits range widely, with small Greek breweries and local wines keeping things grounded.

A wood-fired grill sits in full view of the counter seats, which means dinner comes with a front-row look at the chef doing actual work rather than a pass-through window. This small contemporary Greek spot in Pangrati bakes its own bread in ovens scattered around the room, so the smell gets you before the menu does. The daily-changing menu keeps things simple and seasonal, and the Michelin Guide has awarded it a Bib Gourmand.

Fire and smoke do the heavy lifting at this Mediterranean fusion spot near the Kerameikos archaeological site, where a Greek family's love of Spanish cooking shapes the menu. Set in an old house with a covered patio, it has the relaxed feel of a place run by people who actually want you there. The Michelin Guide awarded it a Bib Gourmand. À la carte or a six-course tasting menu, both roads lead somewhere interesting.

Low-and-slow American barbecue in Athens, which is a sentence that takes a moment to process. Fine Mess Smokehouse is an informal spot where the chef, also behind a patisserie workshop called Lick the Spoon, applies serious technique to smoked meat. The Michelin Guide picked it up with a Bib Gourmand, and the menu runs from à la carte to a seasonal tasting menu with wine and old-fashioned cocktails alongside.

The open kitchen faces the dining room, so you can watch the team at work while you graze through a menu built for sharing. This casual, spacious restaurant sits outside the tourist orbit, pulling in a local following with cooking that layers Greek produce from small-scale suppliers under French and Italian technique. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand, and the cacio e pepe with Mikrolimano shrimp is the dish people talk about afterward.

Large windows flood this relaxed Athenian fusion restaurant with enough light to forgive the menu's ambition. The kitchen blends Greek ingredients with flavors from further afield, keeping the card short and focused rather than encyclopedic. A Michelin Bib Gourmand, it draws the kind of crowd that's happy to linger over a small, well-chosen meal without ceremony. Service matches the room: easy and attentive without hovering.

Every dish here is cooked over wood or charcoal, no modern appliances allowed, which gives the whole menu a smoky, unhurried quality. This Michelin Bib Gourmand taverna in Athens reworks Greek culinary traditions, think dolmadakia and slow-cooked lamb with handmade pasta, in a room that pairs industrial design with an open kitchen and a balcony. Come evening, a DJ spins vinyl, so book ahead if you'd rather not explain yourself to the door.

The marble bar and mirrored walls are doing a lot of work, but it's the sea-facing terrace, where gimlets meet a setting sun over the Aegean, that tends to settle the argument. This cocktail bar sits inside the Four Seasons Astir Palace and takes it seriously, with a forward-looking menu developed by a bartender whose CV runs through some serious London rooms. A Regional Top 10 Honoree at the Spirited Awards for Best International Hotel Bar in Europe.

Xinomavro, the grape that Macedonian winemakers love to compare to Nebbiolo, is reason enough to make the drive up the slopes of Mount Vermio. Kir-Yianni is a family-run winery with deep roots in the region, producing wines from some of Greece's most characterful native varieties. Come for a tasting, linger over the vineyard views, and leave with more bottles than you planned for. Named a Discovery by The 50.

Vangelis Gerovassiliou's 80-hectare estate wraps around the Thermaic Gulf on three sides, with Mount Olympus sitting across the water like it wandered in from mythology. A winery visit here doubles as a serious art tour, with sculpture turning up in the gardens, the terraces, the car park, and pretty much everywhere else. The wines draw on native Greek varieties, and the setting does at least half the storytelling.

Set inside an old Catholic monastery in Fira, Selene is a fine-dining restaurant that has been reshaping what modern Greek cooking looks like for a long time. Ettore Botrini leads the kitchen through Aegean-inflected dishes built on rare ingredients pulled from the island's volcanic landscape. The menu reads like a love letter to the Cyclades, which is either charming or a lot, depending on your mood.

Tucked into a narrow street in the historic centre, this sunny Mediterranean restaurant runs on seasonal Greek cooking from a chef whose menu shifts with the market and, apparently, his childhood memories. Soft tones, lots of natural light, and genuinely warm service give it the feel of somewhere a local would take you rather than somewhere you'd stumble into off a tourist map. There's a small bar for cocktails and a well-chosen list of Greek wines.

The open kitchen sits on the fifth floor of a converted mansion, with the Acropolis framed in the window like someone set it there on purpose. This hotel dining room blends Mediterranean and Asian cooking, plated with the kind of precision that makes you feel slightly underdressed. Evenings lean further into the tasting experience, and the wine list pulls from both established estates and smaller producers.

A neo-Classical building in central Athens houses this Balkan restaurant, where the name loosely means "eat and treat" in Ancient Greek, which sets the tone. The Albanian-born chef pulls from his mother's recipes and pushes them somewhere more considered, landing on a menu that moves between lamb sweetbreads with yoghurt and rice, octopus in handmade filo, and grape-must desserts. Comfort food that has done some thinking about itself.

Marble tables, an open kitchen you can actually watch, and a wine list running past 800 labels set the tone at this Athens bistro, where the cooking blends French technique with Greek ingredients. Fish and seafood anchor the menu, with mature cuts for the meat-minded, and the raw red prawns from Koilada are the kind of thing regulars quietly plan their visit around. Art on the walls, serious food on the plate.

The Acropolis sits dead ahead from the eighth-floor terrace of this Mediterranean restaurant atop the Hotel Grande Bretagne, which means half the table will be ignoring you. The menu leans Italian in spirit, with pasta and risotto given their own corner of the card, and the kitchen keeps things seasonal without turning the whole thing into a lecture about it.

A corner restaurant steps from the Acropolis Museum that earns its sightseeing-crowd location by actually deserving it. The kitchen turns out contemporary Mediterranean cooking with a quiet lean toward Asia, so expect clean, precisely balanced plates and the occasional textural surprise. There's a lounge, a terrace for warmer evenings, and a private room upstairs when someone needs to organize a group dinner nobody else volunteered to plan.

A tasting-menu restaurant tucked into a residential neighborhood, see|ds takes its name from the chef's initials woven into the word itself, which tells you something about how personal the project is. The kitchen runs French-inflected modern cooking built on local seasonal produce, offered in two menus that differ only by length. Upstairs, a loft seats ten beside the wine cellar for a dinner that feels closer to someone's home than a restaurant.

The seventh floor puts the Acropolis at eye level, which is either a coincidence or the entire point of dining here. SENSE is a tasting-menu restaurant on top of the AthensWas Hotel, running two menus plus a vegetarian option built around Greek Mediterranean cooking with an international lean. Herbs from the rooftop garden make their way into the dishes, so the kitchen is, in a literal sense, eating its own homework.

Nikos Thomas, known to Greek TV audiences from MasterChef, turns out to be more interesting in a kitchen than on camera. Simul is a creative modern restaurant on Ipsilantou where the menu shifts with the seasons and never quite repeats itself, offered either à la carte or as a tasting menu. The room is informal and the cooking leans young and technically sharp, the kind of place that seems to enjoy making you reconsider what you just ate.

Fishing boats moored at Mikrolimano port are visible from nearly every table, which does a lot of the menu's work before a single plate arrives. This seafood restaurant in Piraeus puts the catch of the day at the center of things, with chef Lefteris Lazarou shaping it into à la carte dishes or tasting menus that lean into whatever the boats brought in. The kind of place where the setting and the food are making the same argument.

A French bistro tucked into a residential Athens neighborhood, dark-toned and softly lit in a way that makes the evening feel unhurried. The chef draws on Provençal cooking with a Mediterranean lean, and his wife runs the floor and the wine cellar, which skews heavily French. The kind of room where someone clearly cares about both halves of the meal, and the regulars already know it.

Wood-fired everything is the organizing principle at Vezené, a bistro near the Evangelismos metro with an elegant glass porch and a kitchen that treats open flame as a philosophy rather than a technique. The menu moves through local seafood, aged meats, and pasta, with most of it passing through fire at some point. On weekends the kitchen puts out a generously portioned Sunday roast, family-style.

A neon sign reading "Who made the rules?" hangs above the bar at this creative cocktail spot tucked down an alley beside Thessaloniki's Bezesteni Market. The interior is spare, lit by a chaotic tangle of fluorescent tubes, and the whole operation runs on a zero-waste philosophy that shapes the suppliers, the ingredients, and the drinks. It holds a Pinnacle Guide pin and a 50 Discovery nod, which feels about right for a place that's asking pointed questions via signage.

A plant-based cafe in central Athens that roasts its own single-origin coffee and keeps the pace at a low-grade sprint most of the morning. The weekly rotating dessert specials and lighter menu draw a crowd that moves through fast, so if you have questions for the barista, wait for a lull. The coffee program leans curious, the kind of place where leaving the choice to whoever is behind the bar tends to end in a pleasant surprise.

An Ozzy Osbourne vinyl on the wall sets the tone for this small roaster-cafe, where the 2024 Greek roasting champion roasts in-house on a rare Silon ZR7. The dark interior is covered in collages, the opposite of a commercial chain in every sense. Expect light-to-medium roasts that hold onto their natural sweetness, brewed with the kind of nerdy precision that has regulars discussing pour ratios over the counter.

A La Marzocco sits center stage in the white-brick room, with a V60 station up front and in-house baking filling the rest of the counter. This is a serious neighborhood espresso bar tucked up a quiet hill near the National Garden, where the filter menu rotates through changing roasters and the co-owner has a Hellenic Brewers Cup win on the shelf. Sprudge included it in their Athens coffee guide, which in coffee circles carries weight.

Ibrik coffee prepared in a bed of hot sand is the reason to stop at this old-school Athenian coffee shop near the Varvakios Central Market. They roast their own beans and pull espresso for anyone who prefers their coffee pre-wave, but the hovoli method, finely ground coffee heated in a small copper pot, is the thing. The room runs high-ceilinged and retro, with sidewalk tables pressed against the windows where the full noise of central Athens provides the ambiance.

The space used to be a cobbler shop, and the name stuck when the coffee took over. This graffiti-covered corner café in downtown Athens has an outdoor bench culture and a soundtrack loud enough to feel like a party, while inside the blenders and espresso machines run at full tilt. Beans come from a local Kallithea roaster known for milk-friendly blends, and the baked goods sell out fast enough that showing up early is not optional.

The pour-over counter in the corner is set up like an omakase nook, where you can quiz the barista about origins and roast profiles while your coffee brews. This specialty coffee shop in Koukaki sits under a wide arcade, bright and minimalist, with plenty of tables for a long sit. The pizzas are there if you get hungry, and the tiramisu is a reasonable excuse to stay another round. Cups go out stamped "Have an OMSOM day," which is either charming or a lot, depending on your mood.

A concrete-and-wood warehouse in Piraeus, about a 20-minute train ride from central Athens, that roasts its own coffee on a brand-new Loring machine. The head roaster came up through Samba Coffee Roasters and has a clear philosophy: sweet, clean, varietal-forward coffee brewed with good water. The menu is deliberately short while the team gets things right, which, in a city full of serious coffee shops, is a reasonable thing to say out loud.

Half the specialty coffee shops in Athens trace their lineage back to this place. Taf is an old-school institution in the Exarchia neighborhood, the kind of coffee shop where the baristas judge sensory championships on weekends and direct-trade single-origins are poured with deliberate ceremony. Bags of beans and filter gear line the shelves if you want to take the obsession home. Serious without being unfriendly, and a short walk from legendary loukoumades.

A multi-floor specialty coffee shop two minutes from Thiseo metro, close enough to the Acropolis that tourists occasionally stumble in looking for the path. Pull up a stool at the dedicated brew bar and the staff will happily get into water mineral content and extraction ratios without you having to ask twice. The team behind it has serious competition credentials, and the rotating pour-over menu leans toward naturals and washed African lots.

The coffee packaging mimics the hides of animals from each origin country, which tells you something about the level of thought going into things here. This specialty coffee shop in the northern suburb of Marousi draws a loyal neighborhood crowd, but the team behind it includes competitive cup tasters and SCA trainers. A spiral staircase leads to a Standart-stacked upper floor; downstairs, retail shelves carry Timemore gear and the shop's own vividly boxed beans.

A Neapolitan pizza maker transplanted to the southern suburbs of Athens, far enough from the tourist trail that the room fills with locals who came for a full dinner and stayed for the calzone. This is an Italian comfort-food restaurant where pizza holds its own against dishes from the kitchen and a genuine sense of family hospitality. The dough is Neapolitan in the serious sense, and it landed a spot on 50 Top Pizza Europe.

Tables spill out onto the pedestrian street of Athens' old textile quarter, and the double-height windowed walls keep things airy enough that you forget it's technically a bar. Senios runs from morning coffee through late-night cocktails without making a big deal of it, which is kind of the point: the team behind The Clumsies wanted to revive the idea of the neighborhood café-bar where nobody's in a rush to turn the table.

An open fire grill anchors the kitchen at this Kolonaki steakhouse, where the beef, sourced from Spain, Australia, and the States, gets wet- or dry-aged before meeting the flame. The room carries the easy confidence of a great European brasserie, filtered through something distinctly Athenian, glasses stay full and conversation doesn't need encouragement. It landed on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, the only entry from Southeast Europe.