Editor’s note: We’re sorry to report that ENOA has closed. 

Situated by the sea in the marina of Agios Kosmas, ENOA is part of a truly strange neighborhood. There are a couple of nightclubs, some cottages and the enormous, badly lit rowing and sailing buildings that have been left to molder after the 2004 Olympics – but mostly the feeling is of an abandoned wasteland by the sea.

The entrance to ENOA, an area club, is equally unimpressive: a number of trophies cramped behind a glass display followed by a cavernous dining room that, with its harsh, unflattering neon lights, resembles a hotel from 1960s rural Greece.

Things get even weirder inside. ENOA, a visitor quickly finds out, is not any old beach club but rather the sailing club of the association of Greeks from Egypt. The fact that there’s a boat club in Athens dedicated solely to Greeks who came from Egypt actually makes a lot of sense when you look at history. From Herodotus’s writings to Alexander the Great’s conquest to the influential Greeks of the Ottoman Empire, Greece and Egypt’s relationship stretches back millennia.

By the early 1940s there were 250,000 Greeks living in Egypt. Greeks established the first banks there and were also instrumental in the two stalwarts of the Egyptian economy, tobacco and cotton farming. However, in 1952, following Gamal Abdel Nasser’s ascendance as well as that of Arab nationalism, the Greek diaspora was forced to abandon Egypt. By the mid-1960s, 70 percent of the Greek population of Egypt was gone. A number of them returned to Greece at about the same time as the Greeks who were expelled from Turkey, and Athens is still filled with associations of Greeks from the two countries. During the day, ENOA sees frequent use by members, and especially kids, training or learning to sail. But it is open to non-members from 8 p.m. onward every night. (We prefer to visit while the weather’s still warm so we can sit at one of the handful of tables out by the water.)

The chef, Reda Sheasha, hails from Egypt and for three years has been cooking dishes with Greek, Egyptian, Lebanese and Cypriot influences. We had wonderfully silky and smoky baba ghanoush laced with lemon and onion and a dish called “Egyptian rice,” which, in the great pilaf tradition that can be found everywhere in the Balkans, mixed the grains with fried vermicelli, raisins, pine nuts and cashew nuts. It recalled the homey pilafs of a grandmother who cooked in the classic Istanbul style. Sheasha makes dolmadakia, Greek stuffed grape leaves, like the ones from the island of Kassos, tiny, crisp packets stuffed with delicate rice and herbs. The Egyptian influence comes through in such dishes as a turkey kebab that was spiced to taste almost like pork and a particularly spicy köfte that combined beef with a tiny bit of lamb.

Last time we were at ENOA, while the Hollies, Celine Dion and the popular Greek singer Makis Hristodoulopoulos played in the background, we happened to overhear the two elderly white-haired gentlemen sitting at the table behind us who were having a heated argument over which monument was best, the Parthenon or the Pyramids. As we savored our dolmadakia and köfte, we couldn’t help but be grateful that, at least through ENOA’s food, we could have both.

Published on October 16, 2013

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