GB Roof Garden

GB Roof Garden
Grand Bretagne Hotel
Constituition Square
Athens
Bookings: +30 210 333 0000


Last night three of us ate at the bar and restaurant on the top floor of the fabulous Grand Bretagne Hotel in central Athens. With a wide terrace and full length windows running down one side this restaurant offers drinkers and diners probably one of the best views of the Acropolis to be had.

The restaurant has a bar area at the entrance and then the rest of the ornately decorated room is taken up with white linen covered tables. Lots of low lighting, immaculate dressed waiting staff and you know that you are in expensive dining territory.

The menu is 100% Italian, which came as a bit of a surprise, added to which the starters were almost all seafood and the mains almost all meat. They have a pasta/risotto section stuck between the two but it was strange feeling being forced at gunpoint to a fish starter and meat main.

They have two wine lists available, one for Greek wines and one for ‘Other World’ wines. I quite fancied the idea of Other World wines, I mean how often do you get the chance to taste grapes from the other side of the River Styx, but I was instructed to go for a local wine. I am quite hapy to admit that I know nothing of Greek wines and so with a little help from our lovely Cretan waitress we settled for a Bordeaux-style red from just north and west of Athens.

The generally accepted opinion that Greek wines don’t compare very favourably to their French or Italian counterparts is one that I now subscribe heartily to. Two nights in a row we drank what we were told was very good Greek wine and they both left me decidedly underwhelmed.

Our starters appeared and I thought that some mistake had been made, the portions were absolutely huge, and I really mean huge. None of us got close to finishing them and I rather started to dread seeing what the main courses would look like.

Having said that they were all pretty good; nothing outstanding and the presentation (disregarding the ludicrous sizes) was rather uninspiring, but the flavours were all good, the seafood was very fresh and overall we all enjoyed what we had.

We were all extremely relieved to see that the main courses were possibly a little bit smaller than the starters. I had a bowl of tortellini with a butter and sage sauce, a very simple dish that requires a light touch and fresh flavours. It was good, the sauce was not to cloying and the sage not too strong. I find that an overuse of sage produces almost a mouldy taste but last night my dish had three whole leaves and the flavours were just right.

Dessert defeated us but we did manage to put away another bottle of Greek’s finest just to see if we didn’t enjoy it as much as the first!

I liked the restaurant, it is a safe bet for a reasonably decent meal. The view over the old part of Athens is stunning but I couldn’t help but think that apart from the view I really could have been anywhere in the world. There was no feel of Athens at all, cocooned in 5 Star hotel luxury, it was all a bit synthetic and I think I actually would have preferred to have been in some basement taverna in Plaka throwing back little glasses of raki and stuffing myself on dolmades and kleftiko.

Eat at Miltons

Miltons
91 Andrianou str., Plaka,
Athens, Greece
Bookings: 210 3249129


Last night having fallen out of a very nice bar called Brettos we were wandering rather aimlessly around the Old Quarter area of Athens called Plaka when we stumbled upon this little restaurant at the end of a row of houses on the corner of a square. With full length glass walls on three sides, all black tables and white leather chairs this looked like our kind of place! Miltons is not a big restaurant but it was pretty full with quite a young trendy crowd so we stood out like sore thumbs. Anyway despite this we were given a table and handed a rather tatty cheap looking menu by one of the uber hip waiters dressed head to toe in startling white clothes.

The menu contained none of the usual Greek staples that I was expecting in this touristy part of town. No moussaka, no souvlakia, no fried calamari, no dolmades; what was going on? The dishes looked French in composition and I was interested to see how things would turn out.

The wine list was again handed to me on a really tatty piece of folded A4 paper and I was rather daunted to see only Greek wines featuring. As I know absolutely nothing about Greek wines I asked for some assistance from one of the waiters and he of course steered me towards the top end of the prices. We settled for a cab-sav that had ‘Chateaux’ in its name but I can assure you that that is where the association with a French wine ended.

We ordered a small sampling of the starters and had brushetta with tomatoes and cheese, a squid and octopus dish with guacamole and grilled halloumi with roasted vegetables. Chaps, it was fantastic. What I really liked was the way they combined quite traditional Greek ingredients with an up-beat, more Italian-Mediterranean taste. The halloumi wasn’t at all salty nor tough, the roasted vegetables (aubergine, courgette, peppers, Judas Ear mushrooms) were covered in a thick sweet balsamic reduction and it was all divine. The squid and octopus were grilled to perfection, still very moist and not at all rubbery, and the guacamole really set it off beautifully. Fantastic, and I was really looking forward to the main courses.

My companion has a beef filet, mushroom sauce with rice and I had a pork filet with French beans dressed with a bacon and tomato sauce.

My pork was outstanding, it had been grilled over a flame, crispy and smoky on the outside and very moist and tasty inside. The beans were a little bland but had a herb / spice combination that I really couldn’t place but which I really liked. The waiter couldn’t help here either and just advised that it was a typical Greek flavouring.

Despite the wine being pretty ropey we did order another and sat back, extremely contented, and watched the comings and goings in the restaurant. This was made a very enjoyable pastime by Maria, the ‘Maitre D’ from Zackinthos, who is a very friendly and extremely attractive girl and who was very attentive and generous to two old farts sitting in the corner. It made our night!

Should you find yourself in Athens I really recommend this restaurant. It isn’t that cheap, certainly when compared to the myriad of tavernas all over Plaka, but the food is very, very good indeed.

Having finally decided that we had overstayed our welcome we stumbled out into the little streets of Plaka and meandered our way to the Grand Bretagne Hotel. Now this is THE hotel in Athens, it is gorgeous. We stopped in and had a night cap at the bar which was filled with the great and the good of Athens society, this place is very special, incredibly sumptuous, ornate, over the top and I loved it!