Mavro Provato

Mavro Provato — 'black sheep' — opened on Arrianou in Pangrati in 2010 and has been the city's hardest mezedopoleio reservation since the second year. The format is the Greek mezedopoleio at its most disciplined: fifteen to twenty small plates a day, the daily list written on butcher paper and circulated table-to-table, tsipouro by the carafe, charcuterie and wild-greens cooked through and through. The Bib Gourmand recognition is permanent fixture territory. The crowd here uses Mavro Provato for the meze-and-tsipouro dinner that does not pretend to be anything else — the cousin form to the meyhane, the Aegean grammar the Istanbul palate recognises immediately.