Senios Café Bar (Closed)

Address: Kalamiotou 15, Athens, 105 60, Greece
Tel: +30 210 3318778
Website: view Senios Café Bar (Closed)’s website
Facebook: view Senios Café Bar (Closed)’s Facebook page
Style: Café bar
Established: 2018

Review

Lying on a pedestrian street in Athens’ textile neighbourhood, Senios (which opened in October 2018) is the third all-day café bar by the team behind The Clumsies, who, with this venue, are seeking to “re-establish the custom of the bourgeois café.” Hence, Senios offers everything from a morning coffee to a late-night cocktail, a breakfast snack to a blow-out evening meal.

The corner site with windowed walls thrown open allows Senios’ chairs and tables to spill out onto the pedestrian street, which coupled with its double height ceiling gives an airy feel that befits its daytime trade. Atmospheric lighting, wooden and mosaic flooring, wood-panelled walls and the imposing pink marble bar allow Senios to also morph into an atmospheric late night bar. The soring back bar with its display of barrels holding pre-batched cocktails acts as an altar-like centrepiece.

The quality offering here starts with the coffee which is roasted daily and blended in the small glass room upstairs on the mezzanine. Cocktails, curated by Nikos Bakoulis and Vasilis Kyritsis, incorporate Greek spirits and liqueurs such as Mastiha with flavours associated with traditional Greek food dishes, re-imagined as cocktails. Gemista (stuffed and roasted tomatoes) forms the base of the Bloody Mary, bougatsa (sweet cream pie) the Milk Punch, orange pie the Bees Knees, while the Old Fashioned is made with Metaxa 12 Stars, rakomelo (raki with honey), halva and carob. The menu extends to an impressive assortment of Greek spirits, beers from Anastasiou microbrewery and a selection of natural and bio Greek wines.

Incidentally, the Greek word 'Senios' refers to what us Brits would call a dandy, carefree gentleman of a bygone age who used dressed-up in their best suits to visit the local 'kafeneion’ or coffee shop where they would flirt discreetly and offer their buttonhole carnation to as a token of their affection.