Manko is on the shoreline at One&Only Aesthesis, Glyfada, Athens Riviera, and it is four things on one plot: a restaurant, a bar, a beach club and a room that runs late. It was built inside the seaside structures of the beach club that stood here before, so the shape of the old place is still legible in the new one.
The kitchen is Peruvian, with Japanese, Italian and Spanish influences set alongside the country’s Andean history. The menus run to ceviches, grills worked over fire and cocktails built on pisco.
The day comes in two parts. The Manko District runs daily, noon to 9pm, and dinner and drinks follow, daily, 7pm to 11pm. Manko is a year-round restaurant. Children of five and older are welcome, and the dress code is resort appropriate.
The day and the night
The venue has a pool of its own, three bars and tables laid outside on the beachfront. Through the afternoon it works as a beach club; from 7pm the dining room takes over. A DJ sets the tempo from the afternoon into the night, and after dark the dancing is on the sand. The bar list runs from classic drinks to the house’s own inventions.
The Manko District also holds Kooreloo, the bag house founded by the artist Leila Karr. Each piece is handmade from locally sourced materials by traditional weaving, and no two are alike.
Who drew it
EB/Architects drew the architectural concept and the building envelope, adapting the structures already standing on the shore within planning, coastal and archaeological limits, and turning the complex to face the water. Pools and sheets of water lie between the building and the beach. Over the beachfront, columns flare at the top into shallow domes, in the manner of umbrellas, and that is where the arches of the old Asteria return. One family of elements does the spanning, the shading and the drainage, which leaves the height below clear and the sea visible across it. The practice read the modernism of the original Asteria buildings back into the new one: the volumes are low and turned towards the view, the glazing folds away, and pergolas and timber run the dining rooms, the lounges, the pools and the beach terraces together as one piece of ground. The venue measures 600 sqm built, 2,000 sqm open.
The interiors are the work of two French studios, MVP Architectes and Bureau Lacroix. Their first move is at the door: the approach runs through a tunnel hung with quipu, the knotted cords the Inca used to keep records. Planting spills over the main arch beyond it. Ceilings of woven straw take the edge off the daylight, and gold detail catches what comes through. In each bar and in the restaurant, Peruvian surfaces and patterns sit with Mediterranean finishes. Every piece of furniture was made to measure and made locally, in stone, wood and fabric chosen to carry Manko’s identity. The dining room is set so that the eye crosses from the land to the water a few metres away.
The ground Asteria left
The resort stands on the site of the Asteria beach club, which dates from the 1950s. Asteria means stars, and at its height the place drew filmmakers, film actors, artists and musicians to this stretch of coast. What stands there now is a 21-hectare reserve along 2.2 kilometres of beach, the first One&Only in Greece, which Grivalia Hospitality and Kerzner International came together to revive. Manko is one of seven restaurants and bars on the estate, in a dining programme anchored on the chef Ettore Botrini. The resort puts Manko at the head of the return of Glyfada’s beach scene.
Who is this for
Manko suits a guest who wants the sea on one side and a full dinner on the other, and who likes a room that fills up as the evening goes on. Wood and earthy tones set the temper, beige, red and dark green, with bronze and metal against them and bursts of unexpected colour from the planting. You come in through tall antique wooden doors, pass the pool and a stretch of sand kept for lying on, reach the ceviche and cocktail bar, and then the main dining room.
