Anapsyktirio, this year’s revolution comes from Glyfada
A new arrival that goes beyond the borders of Glyfada. This is a place worth coming to from anywhere, to taste the freshest manifesto of Greek creativity. Eleni Psyhouli heads down to Glyfada for NouPou and writes about Anapsyktirio.
- 30/12/2025 12:53
The Athens Riviera has traditionally had its own internal life, one that has never been particularly interested in communicating with the rest of the world. It has never identified with any form of avant-garde, choosing instead the straight and safe mainstream path that seems to resonate with its audience. And yet, for about two weeks now, something appears to be stirring the calm waters of the Glyfada scene, which, finally and for the first time in years, gives us something to talk about that isn’t pizza or pasta. In the place of the old Seaspice—and of a scene that looks only to the present and the future—Anapsyktirio opens to take us back. To return us to a carefree “once upon a time,” to the childhood album of our early years, to swims and bike rides with a popsicle in hand, to summer cinemas with salted seeds, to the life of the old square with its benches, the refreshment kiosk, and its evening stroll.
Where will you see all this? Nowhere and everywhere. Inside you, above all. Don’t look for it in the décor—perhaps only on the wall where old Greek films are projected, like a framed photo in your mother’s living-dining room. Anapsyktirio is a slogan. And it means remembering to relax, going out to your haunts and running into familiar faces without an appointment; it means living again; it means Ψ as in psyche, soul; it means what we all need in difficult times: to go back in order to move forward. The slogan spread with enthusiasm, and from the pavement alone you will feel the party—easygoing, not forced—shopping bags in hand and a drink to go with them. In collaboration with the owners, the space as a whole has been curated by Studio Bonarchi of Vangelis Bonios.
Unexpected encounters exchanging kisses and news, a joyful open kitchen, the most beautiful stone bar at just the right height to comfortably hold your food, funky music at decibel levels that change every day according to mood—encouraging conversation while lifting your spirits—from Pan Pan and house to Mariza Rizou and Imam Baidi. On the service team’s T-shirts, memories of legendary venues from the old southern scene, and cocktails with names like “Achasto,” “Jet,” “Takis,” and “Deloulou,” which is an experience of tomato, pepper, marjoram, oregano, and summer that crosses your palate before becoming tequila; or “Tzidzi,” a Greek take on the dry martini with echoes of mastiha, lemon, olive, and dill.
Everything around you forces you to relax, from the service by people who feel as if you’ve known them for years, to the kings and conductors of pleasure—the unbeatable kitchen duo, Thanos Feskos and Dimitris Chatzidimitriou. You sense that these two care for each other, agree with each other, and know each other well, and that—beyond any lifeless technique—is the basic ingredient of their deliciousness. Thanos, with a career in Copenhagen, the Greek islands, and Athens (DELTA), two Michelin stars and one Green Star, is exactly what you don’t imagine when you think of a star chef. No pose, no wooden language, no uniforms. His talent is revealed only by the restlessness in his ever-moving gaze, in the way he steps behind the bar to make you a cocktail, in the spontaneity with which he’ll grab a plate and serve it to your table, in the simplicity that untangles even your own inhibitions. The essential thing is that Thanos knows staged fine dining is passé, and that good food today means sharing and simplicity. Dimitris has not yet received the Michelin he deserves, but he has something more important: his own farm, which supplies the restaurant with its vegetables. Children of nature and Greekness, both of them, they curdle their own anthotyro with Kostarelos milk and, at last, put on the menu the incredible, gentle sweetness of chard, alongside grated tomato and that anthotyro, tasting of a spring meadow. If there’s one thing missing to complete happiness, it’s their magical carob bread with fine olive oil.
With a career built on impeccable pizzas and doughs at Bella Vespa, Dimitris knows how to turn a different kind of marathopita into an experience—open like a small, elegant pizza—on a fluffy, ethereal yet crunchy dough, carrying the flavor of the wood-fired oven that baked it. The overplayed dish “potatoes with eggs” here becomes a performance before ending in a bite and absolution. The potatoes arrive solo; the raw egg is beaten in front of you the way your mother used to do it, poured over and cooked by the heat of the potato; aged feta is grated on top, along with fresh truffle. And yes—what joy—there is minced meat with pasta. At the base of the dish, a homely minced meat with very finely chopped chives; above it, the pasta; crowning it all, a generous grating of kefalotyri. Familiar deliciousness, a “teasing” only to the precise degree that a recipe of the heart can tolerate—one we don’t want anyone to touch.
The rooster stifado with sioufihta pasta is epic. A wonderfully tasty, light sauce, with tiny onions releasing sweetness and acidity together—that grape acidity that evokes holidays and Sunday lunch at once. For the fish giouvetsi, I would gladly make the trip from the city center to Glyfada many times over. Ultra-fresh grouper, baked juicy, almost immaterial, an iodized cloud over small-batch, deeply flavorful orzo, in a discreet, marine sauce. The need for nostalgia and warmth that we all feel lately is evident in the pasta frola that appears on every table—wonderful, motherly—in its saganaki version, with a perfect red fruit jam and excellent kaimaki ice cream. I, for my part, took with me more of the almond flavor: a white foam with finely chopped almond and plenty of whole, roasted almonds on top, finished with butterscotch caramel.
Anapsyktirio is more than its wonderful food, which will be refreshed at regular intervals. It is a way to reinvent the value of small things, the simplicity and essence we lost along the routes of culture. Soon, it will offer five breakfast options, such as a motherly cheese pie, and five lunch options.