If you want to know what Greeks choose to eat when they go out then the answer is meat, meat, and more meat washed down with the odd chip or bit of salad. And there is no better place to enjoy this than in the hills of Fyli, a few miles north of Athens.

To get there you drive out of town through the massive gypsy slum of Ano Liossia (a sight that many Greeks would prefer you didn't see) before climbing up the slopes of Mt Parnitha to Fyli itself.

You will know you have reached Phyli by the sight of dead sheep and goats hanging outside doors. These aren't butcher's shops as many think at first, but the restaurants themselves, and the bodies are lunch. Not one for the vegetarians, or the sensitive since there are dozens of these tavernas within a couple of miles of each other, Greeks aren't squeamish about where meat comes from.

In winter you eat inside, warmed by vast, open wood fires; in summer everything moves out into the garden. Meat is sold by weight, and the prices are very reasonable. Someone I knew boasted of once having eaten a whole lamb by himself. Compare that to the price of two weedy little chops in Britain. Wash it down with a few jugs of home made wine, pulled from a massive barrel then wander out into the hills and find a tree to sleep it off under.

On the slopes of Parnitha on the old road to Thiva

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