Cafés in Greece Athens

Ellinikós: Greek coffee from the briki

Ellinikós kafés (ελληνικός καφές, Greek coffee) is finely ground coffee brought almost to a boil with water and sugar in a bríki (μπρίκι), a small pot. The foam on top, the kaïmáki (καϊμάκι), is the sign of a good cup, and kafeneía once simmered it on embers for 10 to 20 minutes.⁴

Because the sugar goes into the pot, you order by sweetness: skétos (plain, no sugar), métrios (medium, half a teaspoon of sugar) or glykýs (sweet, a full teaspoon). A double doubles everything.⁴ By the early 1990s, Bravo was selling it on television with sea, sun and village scenes and the line “in the most beautiful country in the world, we drink Greek coffee.”³

The kafeneío

The traditional kafeneío is a family business with plain furniture and often whitewashed walls. It serves Greek coffee and frappé but also beer, retsina and ouzo, usually with meze or a free snack rather than meals.⁵ In villages and on islands it works as a social center, where people meet after work or play cards. In earlier centuries women were not welcome; today women and girls go too.⁵

From frappé to freddo

The frappé is instant coffee shaken with cold water and sugar until it foams, then served with ice and, if you like, milk.⁶ Nestlé dates it to the 1957 Thessaloniki International Fair.⁷ By the familiar story, Dimitris Vakondios, who worked for Nestlé's Greek agent, found no hot water there and shook his Nescafé cold. Nestlé newspaper ads from before the fair already promoted a Nescafé frappé, though, and a 1951 film shows one being made in a shaker.⁶

The frappé is ordered like Greek coffee, skétos, métrios or glykýs.⁶ Its place has gone to the freddo espresso, Italian espresso with ice added. Freddo drinks made up 68% of espresso and cappuccino sales by NielsenIQ's 2021 count, and about seven in ten coffee drinkers now prefer freddo espresso all year round.²¹

What coffee costs in Greece

Greece has the highest café prices in its region. In 2024 the average cappuccino cost €3.35, VAT on served coffee went back to 24% from 1 July, and the hospitality federation POESE warned that a €4 freddo would reach €5.¹⁰ On top of VAT sits an excise tax introduced on 1 January 2017: €2 per kg of green coffee, €3 per kg of roasted and €4 per kg of instant.⁹

Athens, from Loumidis to Taf

Three Loumidis brothers from Kárystos came to Piraeus in 1910 and sold roasted coffee from a cart. Their coffee shop on Stadíou Street later drew the city's writers, artists and journalists, and Nestlé bought the company in 1987.⁸

Taf began as a family roastery in the 1990s and opened its café at Emmanouil Benaki 7, on the edge of Exárcheia, in 2009.¹² Tailor Made roasts on site at Agías Irínis Square, and Warehouse Project on Valtetsíou Street sits near the big museums and embassies.¹³

In 2023 Athens hosted four World Coffee Championships beside the World of Coffee trade show, where Savina Giachgia of Greece placed second in the World Brewers Cup.¹⁴ In a 2022 survey of takeaway prices across Attica, a freddo espresso cost €1.20 to €4.10, and the dearest freddo cappuccino, €4.50, was in Kolonaki.¹¹