Athens waits for no one. Yet it holds its breath in the hour when the streets of Thissio glow like memory, one that hums quietly beneath the marble and the murmurs of the old city. Inside, tucked away like a secret stanza, Makris stretches across 32 intimate tables, nine of them perched on a hidden rooftop, candlelight pirouetting against stone, the Acropolis standing eternal in the distance like a sentinel of story.

It’s here, in the neighbourhood where Chef Petros Dimas once played as a boy, that Makris stands – not as a restaurant, but as a return. A circle, perfectly drawn. A homecoming penned in the language of taste – a dream made real, as Petros writes in the menu’s opening lines: “Tonight, me and my team welcome you to Makris Athens… take you on a journey through flavours… and we will meet later to tell you that dreams do come true.”

Here, everything whispers of something older than itself. The main menu is made from recycled plastic, and the “paper” inside isn’t paper at all – it’s pressed seaweed. The inside cover sketches Petros and his grandmother, the original muse of his culinary poetry, and even before you taste, you feel the echo of her laughter and her hands in the soil. Next to it, a map traces the roots of every ingredient, the paths between farm and fork. Central is the family farm of Chef Petros, alongside twenty-six Greek specialities – from oil and bottarga to honey and cheese – marking the map like constellations of provenance, each one a small producer or story he refuses to let be forgotten.

Transparency here isn’t aesthetic; it’s philosophy. “The farm isn’t just where our ingredients come from; it’s where my heart resets every day,” Petros tells me. “It’s how I plan the day’s cooking – touching the herbs, smelling the soil – but it’s also a moment of peace before the rush.”

The evening unfolds as quietly as poetry read aloud. Before the first course, a hand towel arrives, infused with herbs from the family farm, scented like a green whisper of Corinth, followed by an aperitif – champagne or a bespoke cocktail designed to taste like intention crystallised. Every gesture is considered, almost choreographed – plates placed in unison, sauces poured with the precision of punctuation. When the sun finally slips behind the hill, soft ponchos appear on each chair – thoughtful warmth as the night cools. The light dips lower, shadows stretch, and music drifts across the rooftop – jazz-tinged reinterpretations of familiar songs, like old friends in new suits. There’s something about the rhythm of it all that feels natural, like a verse learned by heart.

Chef Petros’s world is built on rhythm too. Each morning, he drives just one hour from Athens to the family farm at the foot of Ancient Corinth’s hill, where his parents, Napoleon and Ermioni, still live and tend the land. Together they pick the day’s produce – vegetables, fruit, herbs, edible flowers. His mother still makes the sourdough and the jam, the kind of simple acts that smell like nostalgia and taste like legacy – gifts for guests to take home, alongside olive oil and a pencil that will one day sprout a cherry tomato tree. Even the goodbye here is circular – a verse ending where it began, yet full of new growth.

When he speaks of his work, you understand that this isn’t nostalgia – it’s continuity. The farm feeds the restaurant; the restaurant feeds the imagination. The team visits the farm too, to see what they serve, to touch the soil that holds their story. Purchased in 2008, the once-barren land has been slowly regenerated into a flourishing ecosystem where wild animals now return to thrive. Sustainability here is not a manifesto – it’s the cadence of a sonnet lived daily. Coffee grounds return to compost, olive pits to the press, shells to the sea. Plastic use is limited, and every ingredient is used in full – even trimmings become stock, sauce, or garnish. Nothing ends. Everything becomes. A line read aloud and remembered.

And perhaps that’s why the dishes themselves feel like stanzas – fleeting, precise, designed to be felt before understood. Dinner pirouettes in the “Chef’s Welcome” – four canapés from the sea presented on a coral-shaped plate, each a pun on the ocean’s poetry: blue crab with ginger emulsion and herbs, Greek octopus with seaweed and ink cracker, tuna both tartare and charcoal-grilled with watermelon, and a starfish-shaped bite filled with smoked eel cream and bottarga. Theatre and tide in one bite.

The mushroom cappuccino quickly became a favourite – truffle-rich and served in a coffee cup, with buttery brioche meant to be dipped just as you would in your morning ritual. A sip and a dunk, a verse of umami written on the tongue. Then the Bouquet from the Farm: more than twenty herbs arranged like a painting, finished with a macadamia and olive oil emulsion. A favourite not just for flavour but for what it symbolised – the farm’s colours, the cycle of growth, and the story of a boy who never forgot his roots. The two temperatures of Greek langoustine follow – warm and cool, citrus and coral – garnished with beluga caviar and a carrot soup scented with orange and ginger, the biscuit made from the leftover shell.

Bread, too, is a ceremony. An olive oil menu arrives on a board made from recycled olive leaves – crafted by four women of the Yerosi cooperative in Patras – listing oils from across Greece by flavour and region. I leave the choice in expert hands, and the pairing is perfect: sourdough made from a fifteen-year-old starter of ancient grains, served with butter shaped into a farm flower. It’s a small ritual, a moment of reverence, a verse you can break apart and fold into your mouth.

The local hake course is where the philosophy of zero waste comes to life. Every part of the fish – even the bones – is used to make the rockfish sauce, and a delicate “skeleton” crafted from cuttlefish ink crowns the plate like sculpture. An edible limerick, a subtle pun on respect for life, where nothing is wasted and every gesture counts.

Between courses, the wine pairing dances gracefully through Greece’s vineyards – sparkling whites like Hartman Molavi with the mushroom course, early-harvest Kostaki with langoustine, herbal Popolka red with the sourdough, and finally, Aposperitis dessert wine aged eight years from sun-dried grapes. We chose the Greek pairing, of course – how could we not? Even water is orchestrated: a menu listing still and sparkling from around the globe, complete with pH levels and provenance, elevating hydration into its own verse.

The final act – the Hazelnut Concert – arrives like a quiet encore. Chocolate, caramel, and lavender ice cream play in unison, a sweet symphony both nostalgic and new. And just when you think the curtain might fall, it doesn’t. Petros appears, warm and radiant, joy flowing as naturally as olive oil across the table, speaking softly of the farm, the land, the dream that became Makris – then gifting us his mother’s sourdough, marmalade, and olive oil. The circle closes with a bow, but the echo lingers.

“At first, my dream was simple,” Chef Petros tells me. “To cook freely, surrounded by people who care about food the same way I do. Over time, it grew into something more – a place that tells my story, celebrates Greek ingredients, and reflects the spirit of Athens itself. Seeing it come to life has been more emotional than I ever expected.”
Later, standing outside beneath the fading hum of the Acropolis, I think of how rare it is to find a place that feels like poetry made edible – where the verses aren’t written but grown, harvested, composed, and plated. Makris is that poem. A story stitched with old roots and new dreams, herbs and lineage, a boy who grew up and a world that let him write his stanza.

When I ask what Chef Petros feels looking out at the Acropolis each night, he pauses. “It’s quiet,” he says. “There’s pride, of course, but also humility. The Acropolis reminds me that what we do – even at our best – is just a moment in time. Every night, it feels like the city is watching over us.”

And as Athens exhales into night, the circle closes softly – no grand finale, no applause – just quiet wonder, the scent of herbs on my fingertips, the weight of bread warm in my hands, a dream fully realised, as promised in the opening lines of the menu. Somewhere between earth and sky, poetry learned how to cook.

W: Makris Athens

Written by Emma Blunt for Luxuria Lifestyle International