Kifissia

Kifissia is the affluent northern suburb fifteen kilometres up the line from Syntagma, green, low-rise, the residential answer for the Athenian families who left the centre two generations ago. The dining is concentrated and serious: Birdman (Michelin-starred izakaya), Hervé Restaurant (Michelin-starred French-Greek), the Kifissia branch of half the city's headline restaurants. The traveller uses Kifissia for the suburban-Athens lunch that escapes the tourist axis entirely, and for the summer evenings when the centre's heat-island is unbearable and the leafy north works thirty kilometres of altitude in its favour.