Coffee Island & Diporto in Athens, Greece

Coffee Island is one of the largest European coffeehouse companies headquartered in Greece. The chain offers over 62 different varieties of coffee.
The company was founded in 1999, in Patras by a doctor. The business in a franchise specialising in coffee, in-house food and coffee making equipment.
In 2009, Coffee Island expanded and introduced its first coffee shop in Cyprus.

In business since 1887, Diporto – a defiantly traditional spot in downtown Athens – has no sign and no menu. The staff doesn’t speak a word of English, and you might have to share a table with eccentric old men who look like they stepped out of a folk ballad. You will probably have to mime your order or draw it on the paper tablecloth. But if you ever wondered what it would be like to eat in a working-class Greek taverna circa 1950, read on.

Diporto is located smack in the middle of what is – at least by day – one of the Athens’ most fascinating areas, home to a variety of specialized marketplaces. Varvakeios, one of the few of its kind in Europe, is the city’s largest fish and meat market, in operation since 1886. Around this enormous, chaotic market, where vendors try to outdo each other in shouting, lies Athens’ traditional center of trade, with streets devoted to specific merchandise: hardware stores and bric-a-brac on Athinas Street; spices, cheeses, kitchen equipment and plants on Evripidou and Sofokleous; doorknobs on Vissis (yes, there is a street dedicated solely to doorknobs).

The basement-level taverna – whose name means “having two doors,” for the very simple reason that there are two doors leading inside – is easy to miss, given the lack of a sign and fact that the place is literally underground. Once you walk down the well-worn steps, a cavernous world of wonders awaits you. The place is dark, with a faded concrete-block mosaic floor and one wall covered in wine barrels, which, unlike at most Athenian taverns, are not meant purely for décor but are actually used to store wine. From the vintage marble sinks and old-fashioned aluminum wine jugs to the garlic wreaths next to a 1950s fridge and the strong smell of food and smoke that sticks to your clothes, the atmosphere is so reminiscent of the Greece of another era as to be almost eerie, as if through stepping through those two doors you have somehow traveled back in time.