How can you be inside and outside at the same time? Take a walk downtown in Greece’s capital and find out! A particularly common feature of the city’s urban architecture is something that many of the large commercial buildings have: an open-area ground-floor passage running from the sidewalk deep into the structure, and sometimes even straight through to another street entirely. These shopping arcades, called stoas in Greek, extend the public spaces of the city into shaded recesses that feel instantly more intimate, a result of that strangely comforting under-a-roof-but-out-on-the-street feeling.

Most Athenian stoas are lined with shops, either of the very practical variety – bookstores, locksmiths and the ever-present Greek pharmacies – or of the boutique type, with unique fashion pieces or sparkling jewelry, but a good number of them also have eateries with outside tables that are, well, also sort of inside.

You can find everything from fine dining to street-food favorites tucked into arcades all over the city center; at Telemachos, for example, located deep in an arcade (10 Panepistimiou), great steaks and an unbelievably tasty beef tartare are served in an elegant setting, either in the interior or in the arcade. At the ever-popular To Triantafyllo tis Nostimias, or “The Rose of Deliciousness” (22 Lekka), an eatery with tables not only set out in the stoa proper but also inside what were once a number of small shops that operated there, seafood is the main draw for a more casually inclined clientele. For a real budget meal, there’s Sammy’s (10 Stadiou) in the stoa opposite the famed Kolokotronis Statue. If you’d rather just skip straight to the last course, Dessert Wise (in a short stoa at 18 Akadimias) and Sokolata in Stoa Bolani (7 Voulis) focus their efforts on refined versions of the sweet stuff.

 

 

 

 

 

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One of my new favorites, Café Fontas at 9 Amerikis, has been around for years; just ask any of the many regulars who stop by for a bite, a drink and a chat with one another and the staff – all two of them – or drop in to pick up a meal to go. The daily specials change, but you can always get either a fish or meat dish to enjoy at the painted metal tables lining one side of a stoa that also includes a fabulous worry-bead shop.

The eatery itself is as basic as it can be, with a television mounted high on one interior wall and a mystifyingly small kitchen area behind the high old-fashioned counter, but good things come out of that tight space. Last time I was there, I had a very satisfying serving of beef tongue with oven potatoes and onions, having turned down a nearly equally tempting offer of trout. One word of caution, however; should you need the facilities, you’ll also need a key for the door to the entrance on the other side of the stoa and directions from the waiter on where to head once you’re inside. Not a perfect system, perhaps, but marked with the same kind of quirkiness that the stoas themselves represent, a hybrid solution that’s appealing in its own right.