Gluten-Free and Vegan in Athens

What the national society actually publishes

The Hellenic Coeliac Society (coeliac.gr) is an official member of AOECS, the European federation of coeliac associations. Its “Eating out” page consists of a single sentence, in Greek, which translates as: “We hope that on this page we will create lists of restaurants and eateries from various regions of Greece that have been informed about the disease and confirm their ability to offer gluten-free meals.” The lists were never created. The site's footer reads © 2016.

Why we are telling you this

Italy has the opposite situation. The Italian Coeliac Association audits and lists venues, so a traveller there can plan around an official register. A great deal of English-language advice about Greece is written as though the same infrastructure exists here, and it does not.

If a page offers you a "certified gluten-free" list for Athens, ask which body certified it. There is no Greek body issuing that certification to restaurants, so any list claiming otherwise is a list of someone's favourites wearing an official-looking label. That does not make eating in Athens difficult, but it does change how you prepare.

Instead of searching for accreditation, you search for kitchens that advertise as dedicated gluten-free, and for the ordinary tavernas where much of the food never had gluten in it. The rest of this guide is about doing exactly that. Once you know which kitchens to trust, the same preparation mindset applies to planning your days, and comparing athens guided tours before you arrive means one less thing to research on an empty stomach, starting with athens walking tours.

So the search term to drop

Stop looking for certification and start looking for two other things. The first is kitchens that are dedicated. A handful of gluten-free bakeries and pizzerias exist in Athens and advertise as such, and those are the places where a coeliac can order freely rather than interrogate a menu.

The second, and far larger, group is the ordinary taverna serving food that never had gluten in it. Grilled meat, olive oil vegetables, beans cooked in tomato, salads dressed at the table. This second group is where most of your meals will actually come from in Greece, and it is a much bigger pool than a dedicated list would suggest. The section below is about reading a normal menu and asking the right questions, which is the skill that carries you through an entire trip rather than one or two specialist meals.

Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011, Article 44

For food sold without prepackaging — which is what a restaurant serves — Article 44(1)(a) makes the allergen particulars of Article 9(1)(c) mandatory. Annex II, item 1, defines the relevant substance as “cereals containing gluten, namely: wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kamut or their hybridised strains, and products thereof”. In plain terms: the restaurant must be able to tell you whether a dish contains gluten.

The regulation leaves how it tells you to each member state, which is why you will see it on a menu in one place and get a verbal answer in the next.

What that means at the table

Ask, and treat the answer as information the kitchen is obliged to have rather than a special request. A Greek taverna cook usually knows exactly what is in a dish, because most of the menu is four ingredients and olive oil. What the law cannot give you is protection from cross-contamination in a shared fryer or a shared grill, and that is the real risk in a small kitchen.

For coeliac disease rather than a preference, say so explicitly — the distinction matters and is understood.

What it means

Νηστίσιμο (nistisimo, plural νηστίσιμα / nistisima) means "for the fast". Orthodox fasting excludes meat, dairy and eggs, so a dish labelled nistisimo is vegan by construction rather than by intention. That distinction is exactly why the word is so widespread and so reliable.

Cooks are not making a vegan version of something. They are making a dish that has always been part of the fasting tradition, centuries before anyone said the word vegan. One caveat matters.

Fish is excluded on most fast days too, though shellfish is traditionally allowed, so a nistisimo dish may still contain octopus, squid, mussels or shrimp. Confirm rather than assume with anything from the sea. For everything drawn from the vegetable garden, the pulse store or the olive grove, the label does the checking for you, and it appears all over Greece.

Where you will see it

You will meet the word in three places. On ordinary taverna menus, either as a section heading or as a marker beside individual dishes. In bakery windows, where fasting breads and pastries appear especially around the big fasting seasons.

And on supermarket labels, where packets carry the word just as they would an allergen claim. The practical move is to learn one question. Ask "Έχετε νηστίσιμα;" ("Do you have fasting dishes?") and you have asked, in a form of words a Greek kitchen understands instantly, for the vegan part of the menu.

It works far better than the English word, which in a small taverna may produce confusion or a plate of chips. A waiter hearing nistisima knows exactly which dishes qualify, and will usually run through them without needing the menu.

The dishes it produces

The fasting tradition produces a long list of dishes you will recognise on any Greek menu. Gigantes, big butter beans baked in tomato. Fasolakia, green beans cooked the same way.

Briam, roasted vegetables. Horta, boiled wild greens dressed with lemon and olive oil. Dolmades made without meat, lentil soup, chickpea stew, imam bayildi, olives and tahini.

This is not a compromise menu cooked grudgingly for special diets. It is a large part of what Greek home cooking actually is, because the fasting calendar shaped it over centuries. The list has one more quality that matters here.

Almost all of it is naturally gluten-free, since it is built from beans, vegetables, olive oil and lemon rather than from flour. Learn these names and you can order a full meal in any taverna without a single risky question.

The two big fasts

Great Lent, the seven weeks before Orthodox Easter, is the long one: nistisima sections expand, bakeries sell lenten pastries, and even chain cafés carry vegan options they drop the rest of the year. The first fortnight of August, up to the Dormition on 15 August, is the second — and note that 15 August is also one of the days the state archaeological sites close, so it appears twice in your planning. See what is actually closed and the opening-hours table.

And the weekly rhythm

Wednesdays and Fridays are traditional fast days through most of the year. In practice this means a Wednesday or Friday lunch in a neighbourhood taverna is the easiest vegan meal of the week, and a Sunday lunch is the hardest. It is a small thing that quietly improves a week of eating if you know it.

Naturally without gluten, in most kitchens

Grilled meat and fish, horta, gigantes, fasolakia, briam, lentil soup, most salads including horiatiki, olives, tzatziki, melitzanosalata, feta, dolmades in vine leaves, and rice. Ladera — the vegetable dishes cooked in olive oil — are the backbone of both diets at once when the tomato base is not thickened.

The four traps

• Keftedes and biftekia — Greek meatballs almost always contain breadcrumbs, and sometimes soaked bread.
• Thickened sauces and giouvetsi — flour appears in some stews, and giouvetsi is baked with orzo, which is wheat pasta.
• The shared fryer — chips are potato, but they may come out of the same oil as breaded cheese or calamari.
• Souvlaki — the meat is fine, the pita is not, and asking for it “in a plate” (μερίδα, merida) rather than wrapped is a normal, cheap order that nobody finds strange.

And two things that surprise people

Tzatziki, taramasalata and most dips are dairy or fish based, so they are not vegan even where they are gluten-free — the vegan dips are melitzanosalata, fava and htipiti made without cheese, so ask. And Greek coffee, ouzo, tsipouro and wine are all gluten-free; beer is not, and Athens has good gluten-free beer in the specialist shops but rarely in a taverna fridge.

The five sentences

• Έχω κοιλιοκάκη — Ého kiliokáki — “I have coeliac disease.” This is the sentence that changes the answer; it is a recognised medical condition, not a preference.
• Χωρίς γλουτένη — Horís gloutén i — “without gluten.”
• Έχετε νηστίσιμα; — Éhete nistísima? — “Do you have fasting dishes?” — the vegan question.
• Χωρίς κρέας, χωρίς γαλακτοκομικά, χωρίς αυγό — “no meat, no dairy, no egg.”
• Έχει αλεύρι; — Éhi alévri? — “Does it have flour?” — the single most useful question at a taverna counter.

One note on how to ask

Ask before you sit rather than after the bread lands, and ask the person who is carrying plates rather than the one at the till. In a family taverna the cook is frequently the person you are talking to or is ten feet away, and the answer you get is the real one. That informality is why Athens works better for restricted diets than its lack of certification suggests.