Ernst Ziller designed much of what modern Athens looks like, and he stayed in the city for the rest of his life. The house that was his family’s stands at Mitropoleos 54, Athens 10563, a few metres from the Greek Orthodox cathedral. It is a small hotel now, and there is a restaurant on its roof. From the terrace the Acropolis is near enough to pick out the courtyards of the Anafiotika houses on the slope beneath it, with the cathedral in the foreground.
Much of what the kitchen cooks it grows. The vegetables and the meat come from the house Agroktima at Koropi, Attica, where the restaurant cultivates its produce and raises its animals, and the menu is built from what the farm sends in.
Vasilis Roussos is the executive chef, and the room has held one Michelin star since 2022. He serves two tasting menus and nothing besides: Synecdoche, ten courses; Synthesis, thirteen. His cooking takes a classic Greek dish apart into its elements and rebuilds it from his own perspective, which the house calls Authentically Greek.
A kitchen handed over
Pavlos Kyriakis’s tenure in the kitchen ended in February 2024, and Roussos took it over shortly afterwards. He came to Athens from Santorini and gave up the restaurant he was running there to do it; for the two preceding years Hector Botrini had entrusted him with the Selene kitchen at Katikies Garden. The house names Varoulko, Botrini’s, Petra in Oia and Selene as the milestones of his career before this one.
The house rebuilt the dining room around the change. It cleared the bar from the front of the room, extended the kitchen and opened a pass. Giorgos Rekatsinas works as sous chef. In June 2024 the wine was still kept in refrigerators, with a cellar planned for it and 120 labels to reach 300 inside the year.
Two menus
Both menus take their names from the Greek prefix syn-, which marks an act done together with somebody else, and Roussos means them to bind a table rather than feed each guest in turn.
Synthesis opens on En Athinais, the classic Athenian salad in miniature: steamed monkfish in a thin tart shell with an olive oil emulsion, vegetables from the Koropi farm and a little Osetra caviar. There is an onion pie of three things, a crisp rice pastry holding caramelised onions, chives and a little truffle. Prawn Valley comes later, red prawns marinated in citrus juice with a bergamot gel, pieces of kumquat spoon sweet and lightly roasted tomato. Synecdoche has an avgolemono of its own, a fish fillet under a cream of smoked leek, mussels and celery scented with citrus, finished with caviar. The list of wines carries Greek bottles to drink with either menu.
The pastry desk
Georgios Platinos runs the pastry desk. He is based in Athens and has worked with Gilles Marchal and Philippe Urraca. Halfway through a long menu the table is given sourdough bread baked at the house’s own pastry bar, with a spread of goat yoghurt and cream fermented for 72 hours and dusted with vegetable ash.
Getting a table
The kitchen works in the evening, and dinner runs daily, 19:00 to 00:30. Reservations go through the restaurant’s own website and nowhere else. The house gives the roof over to weddings, baptisms, meetings and parties as well as to dinner.
Who is this for
It suits a table that likes Greek cooking taken apart and put back together, and that wants an evening to stay inside one building in the middle of Athens. Mitropoleos square carries on below the parapet, and the hotel under the terrace has rooms with a view of the Acropolis, from 16 to 32 square metres. The major sights are a few minutes’ walk from the door, which makes the terrace a place to end the day rather than to start it.
