ATHENS — The great general who led Athens during its Golden Age, Pericles, famously extolled the martial virtues and democratic precepts of what was for a long stretch essentially the New York City of antiquity. The sundry glories of all the other stuff in town, like art, literature, commerce, and the Parthenon, were implied. 

“We throw open our city to the world,” Pericles said in his Funeral Oration, insisting that Athens’ values of equality and openness only enhanced its greatness.

With that ancient logic as compass, the notion that one can judge a city on the basis of a single attribute, such as the Grand Canal of Venice, flies out the window. The tiniest detail as much as the mightiest monument can hint at the greatness of a place whose original praises might have been sung eons ago. 

All of which is to say, don’t judge Athens until you’ve tried its cinnamon buns. 

Years ago, when I was living in Tel Aviv, an outpost of Cinnabon came to town and the buzz that its opening generated left me somewhere between puzzled and  bemused. “Come on,” I said to eager Israeli friends and fellow junkfood aficionados, “that’s Food Court 101.” 

Maybe I was wrong. This is a realization that came by way of deprivation. My nearly two years in the Greek capital have been fueled by many a succulent gyro and other iterations of the Hellenic culinary arts, but precisely zero bagels and until recently no breakfast rolls to write home about. 

Then, I stumbled into my local bakery, Mountrichas, and there they were: freshly baked, American shopping mall-style cinnamon buns, liberally doused with icing, suitably cinnamon-rich and sticky, and amply proportioned; home-style deliciousness on a tray. 

Best of all: no raisins. When it comes to cinnamon buns, inserting raisins or any dried fruit into the doughy curls is like topping a lemon tart with blueberries. Sure, you could do it, but why?

I had no idea why all of a sudden, in a bakery in an obscure district of the Greek capital where tourists are few, trays of American-style buns were now being turned out with regularity — and it wasn’t only there.

Springtime in Athens puts strolling back on the menu, and a subsequent wander took me to Overoll, a trendy bakery in slender Praxitelous street downtown. There I happened upon yet more cinnamon rolls, but baked with a subtler touch — no icing, perfectly square in shape, distinctly more buttery — and no less scrumptious. 

Cinnamon was not even the chief temptation here. I caught sight of something behind the glass counter that truly startled: a spinach cheese pie roll, or, as I would term it, a spanakopita bun. Spanakopita, of course, is the savory Greek spinach pie made of chopped spinach and crumbled feta cheese encased in flaky phyllo dough, more bits of which usually end up on the floor than in your mouth. 

At Overoll, where incidentally the chocolate croissants also hold their own against the best of Paris, the classic spanakopita is subverted by switching out the phyllo crust for tender croissant dough and rolling bits of spinach into the round bun, which is then topped with feta cheese crumbles, sesame seeds, and herbs. 

There is a Greek hand gesture that describes better than words just how good that tastes.

The bakery, I learned from a local press report, was opened in fall 2020 by a trio of Greek confectioners — Alkis Zervas, Spyros Pappas, and Giannis Kikiras — at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, when few people were frequenting restaurants and comfort foods were the hot commodity. It was also during that time that a renowned Greek pastry chef, Antonis Selekos, dreamed up his disruptive versions of the classic Italian panettone and started delivering them around town. 

The success of that endeavor prompted him to open a “pastry studio” in my neighborhood, Pagrati, which is mostly famous as home of the gleaming white marble Panathenaic Stadium. 

In his airy laboratory of conceptual desserts, Mr. Selekos and his small team produce fruity panettones and other sweet innovations primed to power Athenians on the run and others who want a little something to go with their morning coffee. One morning I entered to find a tasteful stack of fresh cardamom buns, kneaded in the Swedish style, under a glass case. They were ridiculously good, and paired with an almond-infused espresso shot, a recipe for a small urban exaltation of sorts.

The competitive spirit of the Athenians, which in ancient times led it to dominate nearly every one of its restive neighbors, is alive and well in many aspects of the modern city, bakeries included. Hardly a day goes by without another account in the local press about a new pastry twist, not all of which are fabulous. 

A “red fruits cheesecake” croissant from Overoll was a gooey, overly sweet flop. But a new place called Fika has opened, almost in the shadow of the Acropolis, and the word on the Athenian street is that their cinnamon buns really shine.