BUN RUN: This Might Be the Most Amazing Un-Pastry in Athens Right Now
It's spanakopita, it's a Danish, it's a...we don't know what it is, but oh boy is it good
The competitive spirit of the Athenians is alive and well in many aspects of the modern city, bakeries included. We won’t keep you in suspense: the most amazing thing, or things rather, happening right now are the spanakopita “buns” popping out of the ovens at the Overoll bakery at 27 Praxitelous Street.
At Overoll, where incidentally the chocolate croissants also hold their own against the best of Paris, the classic spanakopita is subverted by switching out the phyllo crust for tender croissant dough and rolling bits of sautéed spinach into the round bun, which is then topped with feta cheese crumbles, sesame seeds, and a sprig or two of fresh dill.
There is a Greek hand gesture that describes better than words just how good that tastes, especially when fresh and warm from the oven.
The great general who led Athens during its Golden Age, Pericles, famously extolled the martial virtues and democratic precepts of what was for a long stretch essentially the New York City of antiquity. The sundry glories of all the other stuff in town, like art, literature, commerce, and the Parthenon, were implied.
“We throw open our city to the world,” Pericles said in his Funeral Oration, insisting that Athens’ values of equality and openness only enhanced its greatness.
With that ancient logic as compass, the notion that one can judge a city on the basis of a single attribute, such as the Grand Canal of Venice, flies out the window. The tiniest detail as much as the mightiest monument can hint at the true greatness of a given place.
All of which is to say, don’t judge Athens until you’ve tried its cinnamon buns.
Years ago, when I was living in Tel Aviv, an outpost of Cinnabon came to town and the buzz that its opening generated left me somewhere between puzzled and bemused. “Come on,” I said to eager Israeli friends and fellow junkfood aficionados, “that’s Airport Food Court 101.”
Maybe I was wrong. This is a realization that came by way of deprivation. My nearly three years in the Greek capital have been fueled by many a succulent gyro and other iterations of the Hellenic culinary arts, but precisely zero bagels and until recently no breakfast rolls to write home about.
Then, I stumbled into my local fournos, or bakery, Mountrichas, and there they were: freshly baked, American shopping mall-style cinnamon buns, liberally doused with icing, suitably cinnamon-rich and sticky, and amply proportioned; home-style deliciousness on a tray.
Best of all: no raisins. When it comes to cinnamon buns, inserting raisins or any dried fruit into the doughy curls is like topping a lemon tart with blueberries. Sure, you could do it, but why?
I had no idea why all of a sudden, in a bakery in an obscure district of the Greek capital where tourists are few, trays of American-style buns were now being turned out with regularity — and it wasn’t only there.
Overoll does cinnamon rolls with a subtler touch — no icing, perfectly square in shape, distinctly more buttery — but no less scrumptious.
The bakery was opened in fall 2020 by a trio of Greek confectioners — Alkis Zervas, Spyros Pappas, and Giannis Kikiras — at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when few people were frequenting restaurants and comfort foods were the hot commodity. I
t was also during that time that a renowned Greek pastry chef, Antonis Selekos, dreamed up his disruptive versions of the classic Italian panettone and started delivering them around town.
The success of that endeavor prompted him to open a “pastry studio” in my neighborhood, Pagrati, which is mostly famous as home of the gleaming white marble Panathenaic Stadium.
In his airy laboratory of conceptual desserts, Mr. Selekos and his small team produce fruity panettones and other sweet innovations primed to power Athenians on the run and others who want a little something to go with their morning coffee. One morning I entered to find a tasteful stack of fresh cardamom buns, kneaded in the Swedish style, under a glass case. They were ridiculously good, and paired with an almond-infused espresso shot, a recipe for a small urban exaltation of sorts.
The competitive spirit of the Athenians, which in ancient times led it to dominate nearly every one of its restive neighbors, is alive and well in many aspects of the modern city, bakeries included. Hardly a day goes by without another account in the local press about a new pastry twist, not all of which are fabulous.
A “red fruits cheesecake” croissant from Overoll was a gooey, overly sweet flop. But a new place called Fika has opened, almost in the shadow of the Acropolis, and the word on the Athenian street is that their cinnamon buns really shine. And there’s Queen Bee in hoity-toity Kolonaki, with the best chocolate croissants this side of the Seine…
