A Food Lover’s Tour of Athens

Athens is a city whose charms, culinary or otherwise, are not always immediately apparent. I moved to Athens from New York in 1992, and it has taken years to learn its little secrets.

It is a city at once welcoming but daunting, a chaotic city easy to misunderstand. I have come to love it over the years. On my Food Lover’s Walking Tour of Athens, I offer up a few of my favorite things, edible, potable, or otherwise related to the Athenian culinary experience.

We usually meet in the Plaka at 9 am and begin the tour with a stop at one of the city’s most unusual food shops, where we sample some of the best artisan-made foods in Greece. Tour participants will have the opportunity to try delicious Greek honey, island cheeses, unusual pastries and more. Then, we walk through the Plaka, Psyrri (for the best cheese pies and sesame rings) and onto the Central Market, where we spend about two hours wandering the meat and fish markets, cheese street, spice and herb emporiums, traditional cookware shops and more. We lunch in one of the traditional tavernas around the market. The tour lasts a total of five hours.

Market Tour Details:

The tour costs $135 per person and includes lunch and all samplings of cheeses, honey, spoon sweets, and other delicacies. Diane offers the tours every other Thursday from mid-Sept to mid-June. Tours are not held during Christmas and Easter holidays or in the summer.

The Food Lover’s Walking Tour of Athens requires a minimum of six and a maximum of 10 people per tour.