The File
Da Capo
Self-service café · Tsakalof 1, Kolonaki Square
The café Kolonaki has done its coffee and its quiet business in since 1990. Self-service, no reservation, no view, and Michelin’s own Athens itinerary still starts a day here.
Commercial relationship
None. LivingTheta has no commercial relationship with Da Capo and receives nothing from it.
- Where
- Tsakalof 1, Athens 106 73 — Kolonaki Square
- Open since
- September 1990
- How it works
- Self-service You order and carry it. This confuses people expecting a grand-hotel lounge.
- The room
- Green chairs on the pavement on Tsakalof
- Who is in it
- Locals, politicians and professionals Not a secret. Insider in the sense that the room still belongs to the neighbourhood.
- From Vouliagmeni
- 30 to 40 minutes Straight-line reasoning and ordinary traffic. No authority publishes journey times for these routes.
Da Capo has been on the corner of Tsakalof at Kolonaki Square since September 1990: self-service, green chairs on the pavement, and a mix of locals, politicians and professionals that has not really changed.
Where it belongs in a day
On foot, with the Cycladic museum and the Voukourestiou corridor. Those three are the whole of a Kolonaki Saturday and none of them requires moving the car.
It is also the honest counterweight to the coffee situation on the coast, where the good rooms are new, designed and mostly in Glyfada. This one is thirty-six years old and has never been designed at all.
