Brunch at Estrella Athens

Update 2023: This location of Estrella is now closed. You can find Estrella in Chalandri and Flisvos Marina

Estrella is a restaurant that originates from Thessaloniki and made it recently to Romvis street Athens. I read all about the restaurant and its famous bougatsan last year in Aegean Airlines magazine. Unfortunately, I didn’t manage to visit their  store in Thessaloniki, as my itinerary got busy last year, so I was more than happy to find out that a franchise store opened in Athens a few months back.

Estrella’s tagline is “World Street Food” but it would as well be “The Brunch Place”, as the menu is full of dishes like boiled eggs, omelets, pancakes and the lot. And of course, there is bougatsan. What is bougatsan you may ask. It is a crossover between bougatsa + croissant. The former is a pie made with phyllo dough filled with patisserie cream and sprinkled with icing sugar and cinnamon (I shared the cheese version of this pie in my post about Chania).

The Space

Estrella Athens is located on Romvis street in the place of organic café/restaurant Bliss. I like the minimal decoration a lot: white walls, wooden tables black and white chairs. There are 2 levels: ground and first floor and a couple of tables outside. The restaurant doesn’t take reservations (bummer), so expect a line in popular hours (weekends after 12pm lets say). One last thing about the design that I liked where the place mats. They feature old photos of Athens paired with comic and popular culture characters. Think of Omonia square paired with Spiderman, The Evzones on Syntagma square and Pikatsu or the Acropolis and Cheetara from Thundercats!

Estrella Athens menu

Now let’s talk about Estrella Athens’ main attraction, which is of course the food. I’ll start off by saying that it was difficult for me to choose: should I get scrambled eggs with croissant or that breakfast pizza? And what about those pancakes? It’s a tough choice! In the end I went with the breakfast pizza, which is more than enough for a small person like me! At 6€ I believe that it’s an excellent value for money. The crust is made from koulouri Thessalonikis*, and is topped with bacon, gruyere cheese and 2 fried eggs. (* koulouri is a popular street food in Greece. It’s a thin and crusty bread roll sold mostly by street vendors). I liked the pizza a lot. But, I didn’t like that pink sauce (called Hungarian) and the feta spread. The latter was too salty for my taste.

On my second visit in Estrella Athens (because I had to try more) I got the bagel burger, which comes with a fried egg on top and salad as a side. I asked for a medium burger and it was very juicy and delicious. Next time I have to go earlier in the morning and get an egg dish…those scrambled eggs with the croissant probably?!

Now on to the sweet dishes! On my first visit there my friends and I shared pancakes with Nutella and red berries (pictured below) as well as the famous bougatsan (pictured above). What I liked in the pancakes is that they were light and didn’t make me feel stuffed (I have a sensitive stomach if you can tell!!). Plus, the combination of Nutella and fruits was top notch! As for the bougatsan, I can’t say that I was super impressed. The croissant was very nice, but the cream was rather bland.

Overall I liked Estrella Athens and I see myself returning here (the menu is long after all 😉 ). I just want to wait for the hype to die out a bit, because I’m not fond of waiting in line for a table! Thankfully my visits where on off peak times so I found a table both times, but still.

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