My first trip back to Athens in over a year, and boy did I miss this place! Not only the weather was great also the city for me is one of the best in Europe to visit, so much culture, good restaurants and nice people and the best weather ever!

After being picked up by my clients, the plan was to go to lunch. But as they only eat one real meal a day over here, lunch is more dinner and lunch like in Belgium they do not know, so it is the full deal with everything on it. They knew a very good place called Daphne and since I am a big fan of Greek food, it could never be bad from the start.

It is in a nice restaurant street with many good restaurants all around, my Greek still is not good enough to read the street name, so just google yourself….

We had a choice of sitting inside our outside in a glass veranda. And since they are still allowed to smoke over here one place is for smokers and the other one is for non smokers, funny enough in Greece I always feel if everybody smokes so the non-smoking area was empty…

The interior was very traditional, which is good as long as the food is traditional as well. I let my friends decide on what to take, since I love all Greek food, it could never be wrong, I can trust them being known to the restaurant as well. So we started with a big range of traditional and less traditional starters. Of course there was the Tzatziki, which you have to eat! And especially here, lots of garlic good yoghurt and tasting as it should be, just as I make it at home….;-) We also had cheese “croquettes” made out of 4 types of cheese, homemade of course. It is a Belgian specialty as well, so I was wondering, but it matched our quality, it even was better because they use a much more salty cheeses. Besides this there was a great salad with all herbs, vegetables and vitamins you can wish for. Another dish were french fries, something you get a lot over here and which I do not always like. This time they used good spices, maybe a bit salty, but quite good. At the same time, coming from the land of fries, I would not have missed them if it was not there, to basic for me…

Then came a surprising dish of grilled mushrooms. Often the screw this up by making them to raw or grilled to far but in this case they were very fine! Good real mushroom taste, even better grill taste and a dressing which I cannot place on top. Like a sweetened cocktail sauce or more of a white balsamic vinegar. Great combination, really order it when you are here! After this I was slowly getting full but I can never stop to eat this delicious food. So luckily soon a big plate of met came.

It included all standard meat like pork filet, pork sausage, chicken breast, lambs rack and steak. All grilled of course, as it should be and all so tasty. The sausages were rich of flavors and good of taste, the chicken moist and soft, the steak nice and rare all good. For me the lamb was the least, not enough flesh and not that typical strong lamb taste. But all together just great meat party… gain another 3 pounds today I’m afraid… For drinks we started with a good Ouzo and followed with a local red wine. The wine was what I think the house wine and wasn’t one to remember. I could not recognize the grape but the quality was really basic.

After this great dinner there was a small treat of desserts, no Baklava today, I will eat it tomorrow…., but better quality desserts which surprised me. A nice mousse of coffee-cream, a great chocolate fondant cake (Belgian?) and a delicious honey-cinnamon-nuts based cream pie with vanilla on top. Like a sophisticated baklava. Made me very happy! And together with this a perfect small glass of dessert wine.

All together a very good meal that made me so happy to be back. Points are:

Food (honest good tasty food): 8.4

Coziness (traditional, only hard chairs…): 7.8

Staff (nothing special, very nice and correct): 8.2

Price (did not have to pay, but herd it was okay): 8

Overall a score of 8.3 out of 10

Pictues will follow as soon as my camera works again….