Monday 9 April 2012

I Heart Cupcakes on Tour - Athens


 This is part two of my three part series about my recent travels - aka 'the bad'.

A few days before we boarded the Eurostar to Paris for my 40th birthday we flew to Athens for Up the Hammers festival as Manny was playing there and as I'd never been to Greece I decided to tag along.

I was not a fan of Athens on arrival, mainly because we were staying in an area labelled the 'Greek Camden' which I can only say looked more like the Greek version of downtown Basra after a raid by lots of junkie prostitutes. Our hotel was lovely but the area outside it was not.



However the rest of Athens was lovely. The people on the whole were amazingly friendly, the food was good when we found it (our area was very much in the recession hit part - everything was closed apart from several toilet seat stores - Greeks must go through a LOT of loo seats) and the sights were amazing. Standing on top of Lycavittos Hill or the Acropolis just takes your breath away. The stunning beauty of it is awe inspiring. And how can I not love somewhere where trees with juicy ripe citrus fruit are everywhere!


It was near Lycavittos Hill we chanced upon Cake.




Their selection of cake was quite disappointing if I'm honest. Chocolate, vanilla and red velvet ALL with incredibly bright frosting - all vanilla frosting as far as we could ascertain.


 Tasting them helped in no way decipher what flavour the frosting was. We are still trying to decide what the fuck it was made out of. I'm pretty certain it was NOT butter based that's for sure, and if it was,  butter in Greece is not something I'd ever wish to try again. In trying to decide what it was I had to eat a few bites and the only thing I've ever put in my mouth of a similar taste and texture was play-doh. I am about 90% sure it's made of some kind of edible modelling clay. Oh and dear god the cake was dry and tasted of absolutely nothing. Just air and dryness, oh and a sweaty stickyness that was not pleasant. Even Manny couldn't eat more than a bite of his 'chocolate' one. It was one of those instances when we had to immediately brush our teeth after tasting these. Vile is the only way I can describe it. And wrong. Ok that's two ways.


I kinda smooshed about with the 'frosting' to try and show the texture but I'm not sure it comes across in the photo - it was totally mouldable - just like play-doh. I honestly think I ate play-doh.

I said to Manny we should move to Athens and open a cupcake shop immediately in Athens as this place has several locations - imagine how nice tasty cupcakes with actual flavour and buttercream would be received!!



To make up for the vile cupcakes I had to share the best food we ate while there - pork chops and Greek salad from Telis in an area that was described by our cab driver along the lines of 'very dangerous, you may die'. It was a little run down, with police everywhere but the chops and wonderfully fresh Greek salad made up for it. And the staff were lovely and friendly and no-one tried to kill us so..bonus.

And some amazing Gelato pre the walk up the Acropolis on a hot Saturday afternoon!


Finally, we had some lovely macarons in Costa  - I know, I know another chain but we needed a sit down and some coffee!

5 comments:

Mel said...

Playdough frosting?! That sounds awful. My husband is from Bruge and up until a few months back there was no cupcakeries and now there is. We should have spotted that gap in the market! You should go for it! Although I don't think Greeks have a lot of spare euros for cakes at the mo!

Manny said...

Ha ha, I love your description of those crapcakes! They were truly awful and inedible, maybe we could have used the frosting for window frame putty? The other lovely food we had there made up for it all though :)

Tallulah said...

I used to visit your site at the very beginning. Its kewl to see you're still going strong after four years! (I used to own cariouandcake.org dont know if you remember me!)
Hope you are having a fab time in athens!
x

The Caked Crusader said...

I always enjoy reading about your travels and your honest reviews of what you've eaten.
Play doh frosting...bleugh!

Anonymous said...

If only you knew where to find a perfect cupcake in Athens, it would be very nice! But most of the branded cupcakeries serve the play doh recipe. Jasmine cakes is a little diamond but hard to find since there is no shop. Find them at Facebook to see their job. Have fun and come back to Greece soon!