Working-class pork-chop room since 1955, Evripidou Street, one dish, the institution.
Telis has been on Evripidou, the spice street that runs west from Athinas Square, since 1955, and serves one dish: pork chops with chips and a tomato-cucumber salad. There is a menu on the wall but the room only cooks the pork chops; ordering anything else gets a polite raised eyebrow. The dining room is fluorescent-lit, tiled to head height, twenty-four seats, busy at lunch with the wholesale-market workers from the surrounding blocks. The chops come from the same butcher the family has used for sixty years. For the audience reading the city's working-Athens canon, Telis is the second necessary stop after Diporto, the single-dish working-class room that refused to add anything and made the absence its argument.
Order the pork chops with chips and the tomato-cucumber salad, there are no other options. Cash only. The Evripidou spice shops outside are worth a fifteen-minute walk before lunch.
At a Glance
View Type
Street Scene
View Quality
Limited
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