Metaxourgeio
Seychelles.
Shared plates and Greek regional cooking facing Avdi Square.
A building that's fed Athens since King Otto's stables stood here, later a tripe-soup kafenio called Bahamas. Seychelles opened in December 2013 and made Avdi Square a destination; closed quietly in 2023 and returned months later under founding chef Fotis Foteinoglou (now also of FITA) alongside Kleomenis Zournatsis and Yannis Markadakis. Same beloved dishes — handmade papardelle with kavourmas and galotyri leads the menu — sourced now from small producers across Greece, with service rebuilt from the ground up. Open daily from 13:30.
The building has been feeding people for longer than the restaurant's name suggests. It once stabled King Otto's horses, and later housed a kafenio called Bahamas that served patsas — tripe soup — until it closed in 2009. Seychelles opened here on 13 December 2013, with chef Fotis Foteinoglou in the kitchen, and within a few years had done something rare: turned Avdi Square, then a rough corner of Metaxourgeio nobody had quite decided what to do with, into a genuine destination.
Foteinoglou eventually left to open FITA in Neos Kosmos, now well known in its own right, and Seychelles continued without him until it closed quietly in 2023. The closure didn't last. Foteinoglou came back — this time with two old friends from the same restaurant generation, Kleomenis Zournatsis (Cucina Povera, Cookoovaya, now Gastone) and Yannis Markadakis (Papillon, Cupola, Stellar Gastro Cinema). The three had circled each other professionally for years before finally working under one roof.
Life is to share. The kitchen takes this literally.
Their stated intention was specific: change almost nothing, and improve everything. The dishes that built the restaurant's reputation stayed on the menu — handmade papardelle with kavourmas and galotyri remains the thing most people order, alongside pork chops finished with sykomelo and pepper, and large sharing plates of Greek cheese. What changed is sourcing and execution: the trio buys directly from small producers across Greece, twenty lambs from Naxos at a time, used head to tail, which keeps quality high and pricing honest at once.
The room has grown since the early years — tables now spread along the Akadimou pedestrian stretch and across the square itself, no longer the cramped original footprint. Service, once a genuine weak point of the restaurant's first chapter, has been rebuilt from the ground up with proper training in both kitchen and floor staff. The crowd that made the square's reputation a decade ago is still largely the one filling these tables.
Open daily from 13:30. Weeknights in particular fill fast — this is not a restaurant that depends on a weekend crowd to feel alive.
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