Salonika is the dining room of Makedonia Palace, the hotel that stands on the waterfront promenade of Thessaloniki, 10 minutes on foot from the city centre. The room sits in the middle of the hotel with the Thermaic Gulf in its windows, and its doors are open from 7am to 12.30am. The address is 2 Megalou Alexandrou Avenue.
What makes it worth an evening of a short stay is the decision behind the menu. The kitchen belongs to Sotiris Evangelou, in post since 2017, and the menu is written under his supervision and changes continuously. It follows the four seasons, and the produce comes from every corner of Macedonia. The restaurant calls itself a point of reference on the gastronomic map of Thessaloniki, which is a large thing for a hotel dining room to say about itself, and it describes what the room has been working at since the chef arrived.
Evangelou took the hotel’s kitchens as the renovated Makedonia Palace reopened in 2017, and the whole of its food was rebuilt under his name.
The building
Makedonia Palace has 276 rooms and stands on the waterfront promenade, the sea on one side and the city a short walk away. Doxiadis Associates designed it. The hotel’s own record puts the construction complete in 1971 and the grand opening on 26 October that year, while the architectural record gives a completion year of 1972. The hotel describes the building as one meant from its first day to become part of the city.
A total renovation finished in 2017, with MKV Design and METE SYSM doing the work. The dining room came out of it with the sea still in front of it, and the cooking changed in the same year as the plaster.
The chef
Evangelou started cooking in Tyrnavos and counts more than 40 years in the trade. Greece was his starting point and France his milestone: he worked alongside Alain Ducasse in Paris, and spent time at the Plaza Athénée, in Monaco and in Marseille. Greek hotel kitchens came after that, and with them the work of organising a kitchen and building the teams in it.
He puts his own cooking in short terms. The ingredient carries the flavour, and technique stays behind the dish instead of in front of it. When he arrived at Makedonia Palace he said he wanted a guest to understand what they were eating, and to be surprised by the quality and the taste, not by the picture on the plate. He walked into the kitchen carrying a small recipe notebook with four words written in it, Cooking of the Heart, and the hotel has repeated them ever since.
What that means at the table
The sourcing rule is most of the method. The four seasons set what is available and Macedonia supplies it, which the hotel gives as the only way an authentic Greek kitchen reaches the plate, and as the reason the room does not read like a typical hotel restaurant. A list of Greek and international wines sits beside the food, chosen to go with it.
Breakfast runs from 7am to 11am: a Greek and international buffet, egg dishes made to order and pastry made in the house, served in the indoor lounge or out on the veranda. The à la carte opens at 1pm and runs into the night, with the last order taken at 11.30pm and the room closing at 12.30am.
Who is this for
Anyone who wants the produce of the Greek north cooked by a kitchen that works to it all year. It suits a traveller with a single evening in Thessaloniki, a table of Greek dishes shared slowly, or a quiet one with a book and a glass from the Greek list. The register is calm and well dressed, nearer a restaurant that happens to sit in a hotel than a hotel restaurant, and it is a walk along the water from the centre of the city.
