Athens has an excellent and affordable cuisine, and its visitors can enjoy delicious food in one of the numerous restaurants all over the city, in various districts of Athens. The last years, there is a new trend in Athens with restaurants that offer dishes from alternative cuisines from all over the world. Peruvian, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, African, Argentinean, American, Turkish, Arabic, Spanish and Mexican restaurants are opening in Athens Center, going the culinary experience in Athens a step further. The good news are also that these restaurants have the style of the street food, where everyone can have lunch or dinner on a reasonable budget.
This new trend of alternative cuisines can also be found in Athens Street Food Festival.
The first Street Food Festival in Athens took place last May, and it was a great success. Chefs from every corner of the city offered something unique, and the Festival became the ultimate talk of the town. More than 40,000 visitors created an entire movement in favour of street food and had the opportunity to enjoy extraordinary tastes, which had never been tasted before.
The second Street Food Festival takes place during the first three long weekends of May (5-6-7, 12-13-14 and 19-20-21). This year, the Festival has longer capacity, longer duration, more participants and broader variety of cuisines. The atmosphere is festive, and the culinary experience is cosy and enjoyable. The location is also something different as the Athens Street Food Festival takes place in the renovated space of an old hack stand in Gkazi, near Keramikos Archealogical site.
I went there, and I enjoyed Peruvian, Mexican, Indian and Arabian cuisine as well as Hawaiian sushi. The prices were low, one could eat and taste many different dishes from many stands at a reasonable budget (15-20€ per person). Everything was organised, the space was clean, and the experience was something different for an Athenian as well for a tourist. The gastronomic richness of Athens is a great asset of the city, and Athens Street Food Festival brings all these unexplored cuisines all together and gives us the chance to spend a day exploring them and tasting dishes that no one could imagine.