By your second day in Athens, you start thinking in a new currency. It happens at the Acropolis gate, the moment you pay €30 for a ticket. From then on, everything gets measured in Parthenons. A fridge magnet is practically free. The taxi ride back to the hotel is a third of a Parthenon. And every café on the way down has quietly built its view into the price of the coffee, which is fine until you’re truly hungry and every menu starts to feel like a negotiation.

Here’s a tip. Two minutes from Monastiraki Square, at The Foodie Bar on 6 Athinas Street, a cheeseburger, fries and a cold Coke cost €7.45. In your new currency, that’s a quarter of an Parthenon. For everyone who lives here, it’s just lunch on a Tuesday.

And that’s only the first line on the board. The rest of the menu is equally affordable, designed for Athenians on a lunch break, for students heading home late and, as it turns out, for you.

The Menu, Converted

Run the rest of the board through the same exchange rate and the numbers keep coming out right.

The crispy chicken burger with fries and a drink is €7.95. So is the Club Foodie, which already comes with fries, and a drink. Chicken fingers or eight nuggets, both with fries and a drink, are €8.95, roughly what you want to spend after four hours of walking and zero hours of sitting.

Then there’s the deal for anyone who promised themselves proper Greek street food on this trip: two pita gyros, fries and a drink for €9.95. Two, because the first one tends to disappear on the way from the counter to the table.

The biggest deal on the board is two cheeseburgers with fries and a drink for €10.45. That’s one portion of fries and one drink, so it’s designed for the end of a long day rather than for sharing. Seven deals in total, and the most expensive one still costs about a third of your ticket up the hill.

Every deal on the board, with every price, in English. See the full menu here

Snack Math

Not all kinds of hunger in Athens call for a full meal. A lot of it is the in-between kind: after the Ancient Agora and before sunset, or the moment you realize nobody here sits down to dinner before nine.

That’s where the single items come in. A pita gyros, pork or chicken, is €3.30. A cheeseburger is €3.95 and a crispy chicken burger €4.45. Five mozzarella sticks or five onion rings, each with BBQ sauce, are €3.95 a portion. If you’d rather have a plate than a snack, the Club Foodie with fries is €6.95 and the double cheeseburger with fries €7.65. And the Extreme Fries, loaded with melted cheddar, bacon, chopped beef patty and French sauce, cost €7.95; but they’re more like dinner pretending to be a side.

A gyros and a portion of mozzarella sticks come to €7.25. Just under a quarter of a Parthenon, and you’ll still make it to there in time.

Athinas 6, a two minute walk from Monastiraki metro and one stop from Syntagma. Get directions here.

Cheap, But Not Cutting Corners

A low price on a menu usually comes with a tacit question: what did they leave out? At The Foodie Bar, not much that you’d notice. The burgers are 100% beef with cheddar, pickles, onion, ketchup and mustard, and the double comes on a soft potato bun. The crispy chicken is a whole fillet with iceberg and honey mustard. The Club Foodie is layered with gouda. Orders come out fast, and there are seats inside, so lunch doesn’t have to be a standing affair on the sidewalk.

The deals on the board are the same for the Athenian on a lunch break and for the couple from Lyon with Google Maps open on their phone. Nobody gets a different list.

The red bag travels well. Order on efood or Wolt and the same menu comes to your door in the center.

When You’re Done with Stairs

Athens is a city of stairs. Up to the Acropolis, up Lycabettus hill, up to any rooftop bar with a view worth the climb. Somewhere around day three, your legs start voting to stay in, and those are the nights to let dinner do the walking.

On the nights you do go out, the kitchen stays open late, long after the flea market stalls around Monastiraki have packed up.

One more thing to file away if Athens is only your first stop. The Foodie Bar started on the main square of Naoussa, on Paros, where it has been feeding island crowds for eight summers. If you’re on a ferry next week, you’ll already know what to order.

Every city that ends up on everyone’s list runs on two price lists. The first is for the people passing through. You meet it early, on the squares and next to the sights, where the scenery is part of the bill. The second is for locals. It isn’t secret or hidden. It sits a few streets further in, on blocks that don’t make the postcards, and it’s open to anyone who walks through the door. 

Most visitors only ever read the first one, not because the second is hard to find, but because nobody says it’s there. Now somebody has. The Acropolis will still be up there after lunch. It’s had about 2,500 years of practice.