Café Abyssinia

Chloe from thefroth.com has some of the best food pictures (and generally some of the most beautiful blog pictures) around. She also has a recommendation for the Καφέ Αβυσηνία (Café Abyssinia) on her Things I Like page. Yesterday, wanting to go to a new place for once, I went there with good friends.

The place is truly beautiful. Loved the look of it from the start. It was almost empty when I arrived and it stayed more or less that way till we left. OK, we were a little bit early for Greek eating habits, but still it made me wonder.

The food was quite good, the right mix of the usual dishes, variations and old traditional stuff that you won't find so often. Subtly seasoned, good taste. What we didn't like so much was the prices. OK, it's a nice place, with a great atmosphere... but come on! More than 60% more expensive than some of the place we usually go to?

We didn't even take some of the more expensive food choices and still the bill was a bit striking. They also have the lousy habit of making the portions really small. 4 slices of grilled Χαλούμι (Haloumi - a very nice cheece from Cyprus) for something like 6-7 Euro? It's not that I can't afford it, but I start to feel like "they touch my ass" as they say in Greek ("σου πιάνουν τον κώλο" - approximately "they take your money and make fun of you on top of it").

I wonder if it's really worth for them to have the shop empty and make their money with some tourists and the weekend nights when they probably have more work. With a little bit more logical prices I'd go there more often. Anyway, if you're in for a night where the eye eats as well as the mouth and don't mind to spend a bit more, the Address is: Café Abyssinia, Kynetou 7 (Plateia Avyssinias), Monastiraki, Tel. 2103217047.

As for the picture: Chloe's blog really got me inspired to try a little bit harder on my own photography. This morning I discovered that two of the pictures I had taken could be linked to a panorama (with a piece of free / open source software called hugin), so that's what I did... you can click on the picture for a somewhat bigger view.