Restaurants in Athens are neither plentiful nor distinctive: that fact must be faced from the outset. Some tavernas have local color: a guitarist, frescoed caricatures on the walls, resinated wine served in enamel mugs; but the food tends to be uniform throughout. Restaurateurs, on the whole, take little pride in their cuisine, and specialites de la maison are rare. Most dishes, too, seem to be invariably diluted in lukewarm tomato sauce. Of the Greco-Turkish, or oriental, dishes, taramo-saldta (a kind of fish roe paste worked with oil, lemon and bread) and melintzano-saldta (eggplant paste) are almost uniformly good; one cannot go very bad with souvlakia (grilled pieces of meat on a skewer).
For convenience's sake, the main restaurants are listed in 4 categories: international restaurants; fashionable tavernas; ordinary tavernas; fish restaurants.