Chicago (Greek) - Athena

Athena Restaurant
212 S. Halsted, Chicago, Illinois; Phone 312-655-0000
Date of Review: May, 2007

Located in the heart of Greektown, Athena offers a lively, large and open dining environment that is great for small parties and also excellent for big ones. This is a great place for a large dinner party to celebrate a birthday or even a wedding rehearsal. They have a small bar and a very large outdoor dining area that provides great views of the city. With the large area outside on 2 different levels and decorated with Greek columns, the patio gives you the feeling that you are at an outdoor restaurant in Greece except the scenery is the Chicago skyline as opposed to the sea. This is one of the better outdoor dining areas in all of Chicago.

I love eating at Greek restaurants as I typically sample an assortment of dishes like I would at a tapas bar. All of the cheese and garlic spreads go great with an order of pita bread or a slice or two from the complimentary basket of bread. The tzatsiki is excellent for bread dipping and is loaded with almost as much wonderful garlic as the creamy potato and garlic skordalia which also goes good with an order of fried zucchini. Yes, given the amount of garlic in some of the dishes, kissing a loved one can be a challenge after eating at Athena. There are many variations of feta on the menu which are always good. In my opinion, one of the best dishes in all of Chicago at any restaurant is Athena’s char broiled octopus. The octopus is tender and meaty and is seasoned with olive oil and vinegar. The char broiled flavor is wonderful. The cold octopus salad is also good as the octopus is marinated in vinegar and olive oil with carrots and celery. The saganaki is always good and you can’t go wrong with a Greek or Athenian salad.

The entrees on the menu include a variety of pastas, authentic Greek dishes like lamb (braised or leg of), pastitsio, mousakas or a gyros plate. The menu is large with many char broiled meats (beef, chicken, pork, quail) and they offer an assortment of seafood dishes. I recommend the shrimp Athena which is shrimp baked in tomato sauce with vegetables topped with feta and served over rice.

The baklava is always good for dessert and Athena has a large assortment of Greek wines at reasonable prices.

The prices at Athena are decent. Most of the cheese and dip appetizers are around $6although the octopus is closer to $12. The entrees mostly range from $9.95 to
$16.95. On my last visit, we had 7 beers, 1 combination appetizer and 3 entrees for $110 and that included tax and tip.