Athens Meets the Levantine with Okupa’s New Menu

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Under the careful eye and expert tastebuds of the F&B Director Hrag Darakjian and Head Chef Nikos Drantakis, the new Okupa Kitchen and Listening Bar menu takes a further step to celebrate and integrate the Levantine culinary heritage of Hrag and co-owner George Batronis, as well as their Athenian location. Unsurprisingly these two related cuisines blend very well and the new menu is a pleasure. I was joined by French-Greek Chef Alex Delillez for another melting-pot perspective on the Hellenic Levantine melange.

We started with a couple of cocktails. I tried one from the list of Okupa’s own twists on the classics. I once bored Hrag silly with a long pitch about how he should make it more obvious which twist was which and I’m glad he ignored my unsage advice as the names are fun too. I had a Mamma Gamma which is their take on a Mezcalita, the addition of pineapple and savoury celery salt on the rim maintaining a pleasing balance.

We started with the grilled asparagus with almond tarator and chervil which overlapped wonderfully with the end of my cocktail, the savoury grassy taste of the vivid green spears pairing with the sweetness of the pineapple in the cocktail. I was also happy to see chervil on the plate, the subtle blend of parsley, tarragon and even licorice, elevating the nutty, savoury notes of the tarator. After this came the courgette ribbon salad. Raw and sliced thinly is one of the best ways to eat courgette and this was a good version of the breed. The dressing had urfa pepper in it which tastes as good as it is fun to say. Then came the red mullet crudo. Now, I like a crudo as much as the next man but it can take itself a bit seriously sometimes. This one didn’t. The ras el hanout, tomato water and olive oil combining to give a pleasingly Bloody-Mary-eqsue flavour.

The butterflied sea bass was a demonstration of fine technique in Drantakis’s kitchen with the small fish perfectly prepared and cooked, crispy charred skin and moist flesh. Eminently pick-upable. We finished the savoury portion of the meal with two classics, both done well. Pork belly rewards attention and this one had clearly benefitted from a lot. Cooked, pressed, recooked for crispness, the flesh was easily shredded with a stern look at the skin with crisp. The extended time in the chef’s care had cooked out a lot of the fattiest of the fat so it also didn’t have that “one bite too many” danger about it. With the accompanying salad and pickles it reminded me of a Oaxacan taco I had once had which is about as good a compliment as a pork belly dish can have. It also occurs to me that Oaxacan Taco would be a good name for a 13 minute long Mexican psyche rock tune, the kind you could easier hear next door in the Listening Bar on one of the musical Sundays.

The final dish was the buttermilk fried chicken, a fond homage to the broasted chicken of Hrag and George’s youth. If you ever want to give yourself kitchen nightmares, look up how the Lebanese version is made. This version is excellent and dangerously Instagrammable. A deep but crisp coating covering moist chicken. It sits on the Okupa take on toum, the sharpness and hardness of the original cut with some labneh. I was glad that I was full by this point because it prevented me from ordering two more plates of the chicken which I would have regretted at some point in the future.

We rounded out the meal with both of the desserts, a white chocolate yoghurt dish and a dark chocolate mousse and it was a testament to the quality of these dishes that we were able to eat them at all given how full and contented we were. We paired the meal with an excellent bottle of P.X. Fichler, only because I don’t see it on many Athenian wine lists. There is always an excuse to pop into Okupa, whether it’s a maker’s fair on the terrace, an exhibition in the basement or a DJ playing rare vinyl in the Listening Bar. The revamped menu is yet another one.