Alexandros and I went to a tavern for dinner. He had been there before. It was called “koutouki” (den) and existed in the middle of nowhere, in the least probable location, down a dark rocky slope, by a small underpass under a busy road. The tables (lit with bare bulbs hanging from wires stretched between steel angles) where on the roofs of a small collection of (clearly) illicit single-storey boxy buildings. The fittings seemed to be the cheapest available anywhere, down to the filthy and worn plastic chairs, the salt cellars of badly poured translucent-by-accident plastic, the never-watered pot plants which were attached to the rough timber balustrade with rusty wire brackets. We were served (on plastic plates) by a young man with coke-bottle-bottom glasses. Cats chased each other on the badly-laid hand-made roof tiles. The patrons included shabby men in their sixties wearing ties.

The experience was so intensely stereotypical, that I began thinking of Disney.

Of course, Alexandros and I saw the place with a meta-, ironic disposition. But I admit I was in disbelief. I was looking for clues betraying that the place was imagineered. “Aha! Methinks the chairs are a bit too uniformly filthy.” Alexandros vouched for the authenticity of the place. I believe him: the food was mediocre and cheap.

Last year, during a lecture, Neil Leach, in a dialogue with the speaker, who had used the word “authentic” a few times too many, said: “Ever since Coca-Cola claimed it’s the real thing, I have been suspicious of those professing authenticity.” Or words to that effect.

Yet, how sad to be unable to experience this crudely real tavern without suspicion, or an ironic disposition. And how more comfortable I felt at our next desitnation: Cine Aphrodite. It’s retro, but at the same time contemporary, without pastiche. They sell the sort of snacks that I remember eating when I was four. Yet here I knew that the retro experience was mediated, so I felt at home. It is an amazingly comfortable and delightfully designed outdoor cinema, highly recommended. We watched the forgetable Vénus Beauté (Institut).