As I mentioned in my The 10 Tastings of Athens post, there is barely a restaurant in the city center of Athens that does not serve some form or another of souvlaki. Our first souvlaki experience came at The Greco’s Project, which is situated right in the middle of the bustling Monastiraki Square. Here, we learnt the difference between souvlaki and gyros. With souvlaki, the meat comes in the form of kebabs, while with gyros, the meat comes in pieces – quite like shawarma meat. The most common choices of meat are chicken and pork, and this comes either wrapped in or accompanied by thick pita bread. Fried potato, tomato, lettuce and tzatziki are common inclusions in the dish.

And now for a bit of tzatziki. A truly refreshing dip made from Greek yoghurt, cucumber bits, garlic and freshly chopped herbs, often drizzled with a bit of olive oil. Tzatziki feels like a light breeze in the midst of a meat and carb-heavy meal of souvlaki or gyros.

Of course, there are grey areas where Greek and Turkish (or one might even say Middle Eastern) cuisines overlap. I mentioned Greek/Turkish delight in my previous post. You will come across baklava in my next post. And in this, it is falafel that I shall mention. The falafel that we tried at STYL Café was poles apart from the falafel that we are used to having in Dubai (and have had in Turkey). This was potato-based, rather than chickpea-based, and came with a creamy core that had chunks of potato and leeks. It was actually quite tasty, though not what we expected. A Google search for “Greek falafel” shows more of the conventional falafel. So, this is likely to be some sort of Greek variant of falafel, or STYL Café’s version of it.