SENSE is the rooftop room of the AthensWas hotel, at 5 Dionysiou Areopagitou, Makrygianni, 11742 Athens, on the pedestrian street that runs below the south slope of the Acropolis. The hotel is a short walk from the Acropolis Museum, the Acropolis hill and Plaka. Seventh floor of the AthensWas hotel means a lift to the sixth and then a flight of stairs, and the terrace at the top has the Parthenon in front of every table.
The kitchen belongs to Alexandros Charalabopoulos, the executive chef, who sets its direction: Greek domestic cooking read through modern technique. Tzatziki, kayanas, pastitsio and dolma all come back rebuilt. Christos Papatheodorou holds the chef de cuisine post across both SENSE restaurants. Charalabopoulos has worked in Austria and the United Kingdom as well as Greece, and has been a consulting chef to MAZI in London, which exists to promote Greek cooking in Britain.
The restaurant frames its degustation menus as marking a decade of its own cooking, and describes them as revisiting the dishes that shaped it over those ten years beside new ones.
The anniversary menu of July 2026
In July 2026 the kitchen ran an anniversary set menu of eight courses and then a ninth, the ninth drawn from the restaurant’s own past and changed every week.
Three welcome bites opened it: tomato meatballs with Epirus feta mousse, tomato crackers and mint cream; tzatziki with goat’s yoghurt and garlic in a cucumber gel; briam as an aubergine terrine with sour cheese and crisp potato. Kayanas followed as a saffron confit cream with smoked tomato paste, a foam of the dish itself and crisp meringues for the crunch.
The dolma came in pieces rather than wrapped. Herb rice and fillets of grape sat under what looked like a vine leaf and was in fact a mint and lemon sorbet cut to that shape, and as it melted, vine leaf cream and extra virgin olive oil from Ancient Olympia, of the Tsampidolia variety, drew the mouthful together.
The pastitsio went back to the Venetian recipe kept mainly on Corfu. Guinea fowl and a little soutzouki joined the minced beef, the soutzouki for crunch. There was no pastry: bucatini was coiled around the filling instead, and over it went a demi-glace made from the poultry and a béchamel of San Michalis cheese.
The rotating course in the middle of the month was mushroom: a mushroom sauce with lavender, cabbage with chilli, sautéed mushrooms with spetseriko spice and a mushroom semifreddo. The fish course was a fillet with a lemony sauce of lemongrass and Assyrtiko and crisp greens with courgette and carrot, a dish the chef declines to call fricassee. The menu closed on smoked short rib of Greek veal with black laurel sauce, olive ketchup, sfela cream and kumquat gel, and then on a dessert built from two memories, a Lila Pause chocolate bar and the chef’s own rice pudding with strawberry jam: strawberry compote, verbena cream, rice pudding foam, puff rice and a heart of caramelised milk ice cream.
The menus and the wine
In October 2026 the kitchen listed two tasting menus, Roots & Reflections and Roots of Greek Nature, with a vegetarian option alongside. The degustation menu is 115 euro, plus 17 euro for the extra course.
Wine pairings are chosen to show the range of Greek terroirs. Beyond the pairings the list runs Greek bottles alongside international ones, with signature cocktails beside them, and the sommelier will talk through either.
The room and the house rules
There are two dining areas. The outdoor one is planted with a herb garden and climbing vines, which closes the terrace in a little against the open sky. The indoor room looks onto a semi-open kitchen, so you can watch Charalabopoulos and his team work.
The room is non-smoking and keeps a casual-chic dress code. The menus and the setting are intended for guests aged 12 and above. Reservations are required, and the kitchen asks to be told about allergies and dietary needs in advance so it can prepare alternatives. Daily 18.00 to 00.00 are the hours.
Who is this for
Anyone who wants a long evening in Athens with the lit Parthenon rising beyond the parapet, and who would rather dinner ran the length of the evening than an hour of it. The view is at its best as the sun goes down, so book early and let the meal carry on into the dark. It suits couples, and equally anyone glad to come up alone for a glass of Greek wine at the end of a day in the city.
