Ipsala

In Kypseli, three friends opened a café without many twists in the dishes, offering a small menu with influences from Cretan cuisine, as the chef and co-owner, Nikolas Koukourakis, hails from Crete. In a space that once housed the neighborhood’s grocery store, they created something simple and fresh. The olive oil is from Mani and made by them, the cheeses come from Crete, Naxos, and Metsovo, and the wine is from the Lemnos Cooperative. They open daily (except Mondays) from 2 p.m., serving dakos and bulgur salad, their cheeses accompanied by lalaggia, as well as apaki and sour sausage, eggs with staka resembling béchamel, fennel pie, and a mizithropita that’s always present on every table. As for the music, they play jazz and blues, Xylouris and Psarogiorgis, Thanasis (Papakonstantinou), but also reggae or hip hop.