Spondi

Spondi has held its two Michelin stars in Pangrati since 2002, the longest-running two-star run in Greece, and the canonical answer when an Athenian critic is asked to name the city's most important reservation. The room sits in a restored neoclassical building on a quiet Pangrati side street; the courtyard, when the weather allows, is the table to request. The kitchen reads classical-French at its base, Apostolos Trastelis cooks the contemporary menu, with Greek-Mediterranean ingredient lineage made visible without making a thesis of it. The tasting menu is the format; the wine list is one of the city's most serious. For the Istanbul cosmopolitan on a one-trip Athens visit, Spondi is the milestone-dinner booking, book six weeks ahead.