Soil, where the menu begins in the chef’s garden

Soil is a fine-dining restaurant at 5 Ferekidou Street, Pangrati, Athens 116 35, two streets behind the Panathenaic Stadium. It is the first restaurant of its two owners, the chef Tasos Mantis and Alex Mouridis, who runs the floor, and it opened in November 2021. The food starts outside the city, in the chef’s own garden at Alepochori, an hour from Athens, which grows rare Greek herbs, edible flowers and vegetables, and a new menu is built for each season.

The building is a two-floor neoclassical house of 1925, renovated 2021 inside and out, with the wooden floors and high ceilings of old Athens left in place. The ground floor holds the kitchen in open view, and a chef’s table is set beside it. A guest eats there, in the lounge or in the winter garden, which is used in every season. The courtyard takes guests through the warm months.

The format is one tasting menu, evenings only. Service runs 18.30 to 01.00, closed Sunday, and the menu is 120 euros a head, autumn 2026.

The garden

Mantis learned to keep a garden beside his father, who is from Lesbos and whom the restaurant calls maestro-Babis. Father and son tend the Alepochori plot together, and the garden is now part of the kitchen. What it yields sets what the menu can be that season.

The Alepochori Experience is a day that begins with a light breakfast and coffee at the restaurant, then moves out to the garden in the restaurant’s own transport. Mantis and his father guide the visit, from growing the ingredients to preparing them, and the day ends back at the house in Pangrati, at the chef’s table, with the garden’s harvest cooked for dinner.

At the table

The autumn 2026 menu opens with a seafood platter with fig, tarama and celery, then tomato with smyrnium, basil and rose, and melon with anise hyssop, cucumber and elderflower. Amberjack follows, with pear, loquat and lovage. Then comes the signature course, shrimp with orange, mussels and marigold, cooked in a papillote of kombu and finished by the chef at the table, and after it a course named for the chef’s garden, with peach, strawberries and almond.

Meat and fish carry the later courses. Beef dry-aged for 72 days comes with cherry plum, pomegranate and ramson caper, and caviar, lobster and Kagoshima A5 wagyu are offered beside it as paid supplements. Eel is set against green apple, vadouvan and black garlic, and grouper comes with a kombu beurre blanc and chives. Two desserts close the sequence, almond with mint, nectarine and kefir, then vanilla honey with fig leaves, pollen and honey cake, followed by a madeleine and a pâte de fruit with the coffee.

Every plate, candlestick and vessel in the room is hand-made. The chef designed them with the ceramicist Elia Lampiri of Mud Lab, who shaped a vessel to suit each dish.

The cellar

The list holds about 200 labels, about 35 by the glass. Four pairings are offered beside the menu: a terroir pairing, a Greek one, the sommelier’s own selection and a juice pairing for anyone not drinking.

The two owners

Mantis cooked abroad before he came home, at Hof Van Cleve in Belgium, Geranium in Copenhagen, Frantzén in Stockholm and the Fat Duck in the UK. He then led the kitchen at Hytra in Athens. Soil is the first restaurant he has owned.

Mouridis has spent more than 20 years in senior food and beverage roles across Greece, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia. He moved to the UK at 19 and worked for Raymond Blanc and for Marco Pierre White Restaurants, and was restaurant general manager at the Royal Automobile Club. In 2019 he took the food and beverage role for King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, and he was food and beverage manager at Amanzoe in Porto Heli.

Who is this for

Soil suits a guest who would rather be handed one menu than choose from a list, and who likes to know which bed each herb grew in. Pangrati is a residential quarter of old Athens, and the address is a quiet side street a few minutes from the stadium, with orange and lemon trees in the courtyard. Ask for the chef’s table if you want the cooking in front of you, and ask about the garden day if one evening is not enough.