Onuki opened in Athens as the first restaurant at THE ILISIAN

Onuki opened at THE ILISIAN on 10 December 2025. It was the first restaurant to open at this Athens address, which opened as the Hilton Athens on 23 April 1963 and is being remade as THE ILISIAN. Its hotel opened as Conrad Athens The Ilisian on 23 April 2026, the same date as the Hilton. Onuki is the Japanese restaurant that made its name at Costa Navarino, a resort in the Peloponnese. It now stands beside the pool in Ilisia, under its chef and co-owner Stamatis Skriapas. Yabu Pushelberg designed the interiors, lighting and styling for their client, Temes.

The room

The client wanted an Athens home for Onuki that stayed true to Japanese craft and seasonality, and also felt clearly Athenian. The space had to flow from the open kitchen to the terrace, and an upper level had to work for both gatherings and private meals. The designers call the result “Japanese calm, Athenian charge”. The plan works as a sequence: arrival, then the bar, then the open air, then the quieter floor above.

Colour guides the way. Warm persimmon tones gather at the bar and draw the eye upstairs. Indigo runs out onto the terrace, where sculpted lights in Aegean blue hang overhead. On the upper level, translucent sliding panels modelled on shoji, the paper screens of Japanese houses, divide the alcoves. A sushi bar stands at one side of the terrace below. The room holds work by two Athens artists: a large painting by Sofia Stevi on the terrace, and work by Katerina Charou set into the panels.

The designers built the room around kizuna, which they define as the lasting bond between chef and guest, season and plate, tradition and the present moment. Here the idea shapes the plan. The kitchen is open to the terrace, and the upper floor can close off for privacy without losing touch with the room below.

The kitchen

Skriapas cooks the food of Japan region by region. The cooking leads with umami, the savoury taste, and follows the season. He revisits familiar recipes and keeps the traditional methods intact. On a given day the sushi bar has some 20 kinds of fish, Hokkaido scallops among them, with prawns, the fish of the day and a short list of meat. The fruit and vegetables come from Japan, and the chef has also chosen small Greek producers. The drinks list is Japanese and particular: rare whiskies, small-batch shōchū (a Japanese distilled spirit) and handcrafted saké. The cocktails use yuzu, a Japanese citrus, the herb shiso and seasonal blossom.

Onuki learned its manners in the Peloponnese. It began at Costa Navarino, in The Romanos. A city restaurant is a harder test. A resort restaurant is judged against a holiday, and a city restaurant against every other table its guests could have chosen that evening.

Ilisia

The address matters. Onuki stands in Ilisia, on the block that opened as the Hilton Athens. For two generations the Hilton was where the city sent an arriving guest to stay. In the remaking of the site, the restaurant opened before the hotel.

That order suits the city. Athenians take eating out more seriously than many visitors who came for the Acropolis expect. A restaurant that fills with its own diners, and does not depend on the guests sleeping upstairs, is a surer foundation for what follows.

What it changes

For anyone who knows Onuki at Costa Navarino, the Athens room saves a long drive south. For anyone who does not, it is rare in Athens: a Japanese restaurant planned at the scale and finish of an international project. Its chef owns part of it and so is there himself, and its designers have a long record of knowing when to stop. It opened in December 2025, a month when Athens has no high season, and ahead of the hotel it belongs to.

Who is this for

Onuki suits a diner who wants Japanese cooking in Athens, whether at the counter or around a private table. Guests enter through a dark hall of black stone floors, where a round blue-stained timber table carries a large flower arrangement beneath a sculpted metal lattice. Rust-red stools line a tiled counter that faces the open kitchen. Private alcoves seat six at a round table under a paper lantern. The terrace looks over the lit city to a floodlit hill. The designers aimed for a balance of intimacy and energy.