Exploring Voulis Street: Ariston Bakery

Ariston’s bakery on Voulis Street (just behind Syntagma Square) that puts out tiropita, or “cheese pies” in such volumes that it perfumes three whole blocks with the aroma of baked butter. Tiropita is the national snack and consumed by Greeks, typically, between the hours of eleven and three p.m. as some substitution for one of the meals they chose to ignore, be it breakfast or lunch. You’ll see masses of tiropita noshers standing just oustide of the bakery diving into their paper bags directly. The smart ones arrived via motorcycle and use it like a bar stool.

A travel book I read declared it to be the BEST place for tiropita, which you can find on every block, so it occurred to me that said travel guide could not possibly have tried them all. How accurate is the statement that Ariston’s pies were the best? Shouldn’t someone put this to a scientific evaluation?

At four pm, most of he shelves had been cleared save for four varieties: Leek, beef, cheese, and mushroom. It comes in mushroom? I paid the one euro eighty and turned left outside the door. Where to sit, where to sit… I was tempted to just “borrow” the motorcycle of someone else. I looked for a step, a bench, anything, and finally I caved and just positioned my bulging backpack against the wall. Boots crossed at the ankles.

This was my five minutes in heaven. Stuffed with limp, buttery mushrooms, rice and onions that leaked out like magma from it’s flaky enclave, it spilled into the white paper bag so that by the time I’d finished the pie I began sucking up the reserves. I think now I can say that I don’t care who has the best pies. In the words of Fleetwood Mac, “Love the one you’re with.”

Below are some examples of how to eat tiropita like a local. If a motorcycle or supporting wall of the bakery aren’t readily available, continue further down, where Voulis meets Kolokotroni Street. There are trees and benches in front of the old first parliament building, now the National History Museum. (The modern parliament building is in Syntagma Square.)

Vouli, so you know, is the Greek word for “parliament house.”