2023-11-01 13:21:00
Going out to hotel restaurants, with few exceptions, is not common for Athenians, unless it is for business meals. Many of us may think – wrongly – that downtown hotels are mainly aimed at visitors and tourists and not at the residents of this city. Thus, when we heard about the creation of the new restaurant of Electra Palace, named Zohos, the first thought was that the food will mainly concern their international clientele. Of course, here we should say that Electra has already created a popular concept of comfort food, which has already been loved by the Athenian public, Lobby, the modern burger joint on the ground floor of Electra Metropolis, corner of Voulis and Apollonos.
We went down Admiral Nikodimos and entered the courtyard of the Electra Palace in Plaka. Greenery, aromatic plants and herbs have completely transformed the hotel garden. The two main buildings rising eight stories high, a neoclassical one and a modern one built later as an extension, create a well-kept backdrop, beautifully lit, above and around the Zohos (or Zohos) restaurant area. A greenhouse was also eccentrically built, in which there are both tables for dining, as well as containers with sprouts and sprouts grown for the needs of the kitchen. Handmade ceramic dishes, embroidered towels, pots with olives on the table set the mood and raise the bar of expectations for the food. It is a place that invites you to have a good time. At the tables the people were divided: Greeks and foreigners were enjoying wine (sixty available selected labels from the domestic and international vineyard) with many saucers placed in the middle. This is also the philosophy of the restaurant, a modern depiction of a Greek table with appetizers for everyone, as is traditionally done in our homes.
Bread and all kinds of dough are made in-house / photo: Dimitris Vlaikos
Their delicious breadsticks / photo: Dimitris Vlaikos
Aromatic handmade butter with chives / photo: Dimitris Vlaikos
Crispy cod croquettes with pepper sauce / photo: Dimitris Vlaikos
More or less, most of the familiar flavors were there: the marinated anchovy, the eggplant salad, the tyrokauteri and the taramas, along with nice breadsticks and sourdough bread, the Serres peppers, the herb pies and the cod croquettes. Their prescription applies to everyone. Locals who want to drink a glass of wine with a good nibble, creative, more upgraded, but also visitors from other countries who have the opportunity to see in a well-kept environment one of the most beautiful chapters of Greek cuisine, today’s mezedakia. All this is prepared by the Executive Chef of Electra Hotels Sakis Venetis and the Chef de cuisine Haris Antonopoulos. From the cooking techniques we encountered in most of the dishes, it is clear that their cooking is quite based on technology – they have dehumidifiers, sous vide, even an electronic still to make their own liqueurs and drinks (we tried some of their signature cocktails which worked fine as an aperitif). Now, to be honest, I don’t think technology is a necessary tool for highlighting Greek cuisine, at least not at the level of the mezes we tried. Many times the grill does its job better than the bag in the runner. Let me explain: in some dishes the partnership of material and technique had not worked – one such was the baked aubergines with Skyros gruyere foam. I would have liked to have tried this thick atofio cheese, in flakes or coarse shavings, and not in foam, a form that dilutes its tangy flavor, which is a request. On the other hand, the Karpathos onion pie was quite a rustic dish, presented in a modern way, which managed to enter the top 3 of the evening for most of the attendees. On the menu there are many foraged and small-scale products, cheeses, seafood, which seem to have been researched. At this level, the menu could act as a lysary of flavors for foreign visitors who would probably find some ingredients such as cashew cheese, Drama sausage, pomegranate pimizi, spinialo and black garlic too exotic, with some of which even the natives are not familiar with.
As desserts, traditional sweets are served that clearly bear the confectioner’s modern interventions, such as the orange pie with fennel ice cream. Of particular interest are the sorbets with flavors such as kumquat with vanilla or bergamot and mastic, which call out their Greek origins. Dishes range from 9 to 20 euros. Estimate around 35 euros per person, without a bottle of wine.
Source: Gastronomos
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