On 18 December 2025, the main restaurant of the Aigli pavilion reopened as Zappa. The pavilion is part of the Aigli complex, Zappeion Garden, Athens, at the edge of the city. For the first time in the venue’s history, the room has a name of its own. It is now an all-day fine-dining restaurant and bar run by Chrysanthos Karamolegos, a chef with nearly 40 years in professional kitchens. He has come back to the centre of Athens after some 15 years of work elsewhere in Greece and abroad.

The pavilion in the garden

Aigli has been pouring coffee since 1904. It stands in the National Garden beside the neoclassical Zappeion hall. Its view over the garden towards the Acropolis, the sacred rock above the city, made it a meeting place for the city’s intellectuals, artists and innovators almost at once. Its open-air cinema is the oldest in Athens still working, and a protected monument since the 1990s. It runs from May to October, one evening at a time beneath the trees. Few places in Athens have had company for so long without a break.

The pavilion was fully renovated in 2025, with architecture and interiors by Neiheiser Argyros with Esé studio across some 3,200 square metres of interior. The architects call their approach “ornamental minimalism”. They kept the classical detail of the building but pared it back, left the marble and the woodwork plain, and opened the once inward-looking rooms to the garden with new terraces and views. Zappa is one of five spaces in the complex, with the ballroom, the upstairs event floor, the yard and the cinema.

Inside, the dining room is panelled in wood the colour of chocolate, under warm, carefully placed light. Tables are dressed in double cloths, and the windows give onto the garden, a view at its best after dark. A low, broad semicircular bar of wood curves around the open kitchen, so anyone who sits at it can watch the cooking.

The chef

Karamolegos was born in Athens, and his family line runs back to Santorini. He first made his name in the capital, at Aristera Dexia in Rouf. He then worked along the coasts of the Peloponnese and Macedonia. At Costa Navarino he ran Barbouni, the seafront restaurant, and went on to become chef patron, the chef in charge, of three of the resort’s restaurants: Tomata, the Kafenio & Deli and the Souvlakerie. At Sani Resort in Halkidiki, his Tomata was for years a point of reference. Before returning to Athens he cooked at Anama, in Gialova.

That career explains the food. Its base is openly Greek, built on herbs and on sauces he makes himself, with the Eastern and North African seasoning of a cook who has read widely and travelled further. The kitchen works in three modes through the day: coffee and sandwiches in the morning, then cooked dishes at lunch and again at dinner.

The menu makes this concrete. Scallop carpaccio comes with sea urchin, quince and seaweed. Shrimp and king crab come with artichokes and chermoula, a North African herb sauce. Pork is cooked slowly and finished with avgolemono, the egg and lemon sauce that is the most homely in Greek cooking, and served beside chimichurri, an Argentine herb sauce. Dessert is an apple tarte tatin with bay-leaf ice cream. Working with him are Viktoras Kouroupis, Denisa Varcholova and Georgia Papaioannou, who has cooked beside him for years.

The bar and the cellar

The bar serves classic cocktails under Thodoris Pyrillos, whose reputation rests on the classics more than on invention for its own sake. In a city whose bars are always changing, that is a quiet choice and a confident one. The wine list sets Greek labels beside international ones, each of them chosen with care.

A landmark with a kitchen

Athens has never been short of good restaurants. It has rarely had a serious kitchen inside one of its own landmarks, on a site the whole city already knows. That is the interesting part of this opening: an old address asked to hold a higher standard than it has held before.

Taking a name shows the intent. A restaurant known only by its building is a room in a monument. One with a name of its own asks to be judged on the food.

Who is this for

Zappa suits couples and friends who want a long, considered meal in a landmark of the city. Alabaster lanterns hang above panelled walls, over tables dressed in white and rust-red armchairs. Tall lit cabinets of wine stand behind a long green marble counter, where high stools face the pass. At the bar, a row of candles burns along the dark counter.