Delta is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, an upright triangle, and the name a restaurant in Athens took for its three equal sides: gastronomy, sustainability and culture. It opened in July 2021, in the space the catering house Dipnosofistirion had held at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center, Renzo Piano’s complex, and it has kept the same address since: SNFCC, fifth floor of the Greek National Opera building, 364 Syngrou Avenue, Kallithea, Athens.
The Stavros Niarchos Foundation created the restaurant through its own initiative and grant, and announced it on 17 December 2020, when co-president Andreas Dracopoulos set the brief with the SNFCC, Dipnosofistirion and Dimitris Skarmoutsos: “an international gastronomic destination”, held to the standard the cultural centre had set for public space. Dipnosofistirion, a catering house in Kifissia with more than two decades behind it, has run Delta since.
Dinner is a set menu: 12 courses, 240 euros, composed by executive chef George Papazacharias with his team. He builds the stages on fermentation and Scandinavian preservation, on local raw materials and on small-scale producers, and the menu moves with the seasons. Over about 3 hours the team takes a table through the evening course by course, giving each plate its story and the thinking behind it.
The room
The interior is the work of Kois Associated Architects, 885 sq m won through an invited competition the SNFCC held, with Stelios Kois as principal architect. The studio set out to reach Greek identity without quoting a historic motif, working instead in raw wood, metal and stone. The functions are allotted by hierarchy across several levels, and nothing partitions them, so a guest sees the whole interior in one uninterrupted look.
The circular bar stands at the centre, raised above the rest and ringed by the columns of the space. The sculptors Voukenas and Petrides made it, a functional sculpture with a curved surface and a low inner glow. Beyond it the open kitchen sits inside a translucent volume that marks the boundary without closing it, and holds private dinners and wine tastings at a bar of marble and bronze whose light shifts through the evening. Above the dining tables hangs a forest of reflective planted pots, which bring something of the atmosphere and the small scale of nature inside. Contemporary works by Greek artists hang in the room and are changed every year.
Nothing lost, nothing wasted
The kitchen works farm to table and keeps a closed cycle: an ingredient that arrives for the appetisers can carry through the main courses and come round again in the desserts. The foundation had set out the philosophy at the announcement, nothing lost and nothing wasted, along with supply from small producers across Greece, an emphasis on organic growing, and a plan for workshops and food and wine tasting seminars on the same subject.
The wine and the bar
Dimitris Zannikos is head sommelier, and his list runs to hundreds of Greek and international labels, old and new, from small wineries and large. Two wine cellars extend it, each given over to something private. Twelve seats at the sculptural bar, fifty in the lounge, and the bar keeps a list of its own: six cocktails built on two rules, seasonality and waste consciousness, the second of which sends surplus from the kitchen’s production into the glass. The drink pairings are priced apart from the menu and span Juice 90 euros to Resonance 480 euros, the first a juice flight and the last seven wines.
Who is this for
Delta suits a guest who will give a whole evening to one table, and who cares about the room as much as the food. The approach sets the tone: a mosaic of large fragments of crystalline marble at the entrance, Greek modernism underfoot. The bar lounge takes deep sofas and refined minimal lighting, and the dress code runs smart, smart casual or formal. A limited number of guests are seated each evening, and groups of more than 20 are welcome.
