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The double-height Tiger Loop cafe at ON Residence seen from the floor above, a patterned tile floor, hanging lamps, small Christmas trees and the Thermaic Gulf through tall windows

Inspection · Thessaloniki, Greece

ON Residence

A 1926 waterfront building on Leoforos Nikis, reopened in 2022 around the restaurant that used to be the centre of the city's social life. The initials are the restaurant's. I have been twice, once for a night in April and once for Christmas.

Deluxe Seafront SLH withIN

Book ON Residence with me, through Classic Travel Register first, free of charge, and the rates and partner benefits open up, with the account linked to Wheresnik. Tell me your dates before you book and I will say which room to ask for here, and which week I would avoid.

Small Luxury Hotels of the World what it carries

  • Breakfast for two
  • A credit at the hotel
  • Upgrade on arrival
  • Early in, late out

Two nights minimum, which no other programme here asks.

What SLH withIN brings, in full →

The front is the first thing and it does the work. Seven storeys of 1926 Thessaloniki on the seafront road, columns across the ground floor, tall windows above, and at night the whole thing is lit from below so the stone goes warm and the glass goes black. Jacques Mosse drew it, the city listed it in 1993, and for twenty-eight years it was a building everyone walked past and nobody went into.

A restored 1920s dining room with a pale green coffered ceiling, a mezzanine with ironwork railings, a sputnik chandelier and glass globes over laid tables
Olympos Naoussa, before service. The mezzanine, the ceiling and the floor are the originals, and everything hanging from them is not.

What went on behind it is the reason to come. Olympos Naoussa began as a beer hall and tasting rooms, became a restaurant in 1927, and spent the middle of the century as the address in Thessaloniki for anybody marking anything. It was a cabaret under the German occupation. It came back after the war and ran until 1994, and then it stopped. The hotel that opened here in 2022 did not borrow the name for atmosphere. It reopened the restaurant, and then took its initials: O and N.

The building

The 1926 facade at dusk, columns and tall windows with Christmas wreaths hung along the ground floor
The same front at five in the afternoon in December. Leoforos Nikis is full at this hour, every day of the year.
A black and white diamond-tiled floor seen from several storeys above, down a glazed lightwell
The lightwell, looking down. The floor at the bottom of it is the one you cross on the way in.
A staircase with a dark iron balustrade curving up past a wall, globe lights hanging in the stairwell
The stair. There is a lift and I took the stairs most times, which tells you something about the stair.

Downstairs is where the old building is, and it has been furnished for sitting in and not for walking through.

A lobby with a long oxblood leather banquette down one side, a reception desk at the far end and a tall plant beside a glazed door onto a courtyard
The length of the lobby, with reception at the end of it. The banquette runs most of the way and people use it.
A sitting room with lit timber shelving either side of a fireplace, green and navy cane armchairs on a pale rug
The sitting room off the lobby. Shelves lit from inside, objects on them that somebody chose.
An oxblood leather banquette under a framed black and white photograph, globe sconces either side and a blue rug below
The other end of the same banquette. The photograph is the city, and there are more of them upstairs.

Inside, a black and white tiled hall, dark wood, cream, and a set of period details that have been kept and not copied. The contemporary furniture stops it reading as a reconstruction. Sixty rooms and suites over seven floors, the restored structure on the street side and a new annex behind it, which is where the seafront rooms are.

Olympos Naoussa

The dining room from the other end, globes at two heights, the mezzanine above and tables laid in white linen
From the far end. Two heights of light, which is why the room works both at lunch and at night.
A large globe chandelier in a coffered white room with tall windows onto the sea behind it
The chandelier against the windows. Behind it is the gulf, which no photograph of this room ever quite includes.
A gold sign reading OLYMPOS NAOUSSA, Greek Urban Cuisine, with a rooster above the lettering
The mark, with the rooster. It is the old one, and that is deliberate.

The room is the reason and the cooking holds up its end. Dimitris Tasioulas is in the kitchen, and the approach is to take Thessaloniki's own food, which is Macedonian and Anatolian and Jewish and Balkan all at once, and cook it with technique where another kitchen would use reverence. Moussaka built on beef cheek and oxtail. Youvarlakia made with seafood and finished with a seafood avgolemono. Trigona Panoramatos, the city's own filled pastry, served with cardamom cream and burnt butter ice cream.

A table laid in white linen with a vase of winter foliage and berries, plates and a dark bowl of sauce
Our table at Christmas. The arrangement is winter foliage and it is on every table in the room.
A dish of braised meat on a pale puree with radish slices and a crisp garnish on a speckled plate
One of the plates. The kitchen is doing Greek food with a technique it did not have in 1961.
A hardback book about the history of Olympos Naoussa lying on a laid table, its cover showing the old dining room
They keep the history on the table, literally. The photograph on the cover is this room, full, decades ago.
A white plate stamped OLYMPOS NAOUSSA with a rooster above the lettering, a folded napkin and a patterned cloth behind it
The rooster is on the plates as well. It was on them before the war and it is on them now.
A tray of white bowls from above holding almonds, cashews, walnuts, dates, raisins, chia and dried fruit, a spoon in each
Breakfast, the part nobody photographs. Seeds, nuts and dried fruit, in bowls, with a spoon in each one.
A poached egg on toasted bread with ham and herbs on a dark plate, a glass of orange juice beside it
Breakfast proper, after the bowls. It comes from the kitchen and not from a hotplate.

It is in the Michelin Guide. The hotel itself holds One Michelin Key, which is a different award for a different thing, and the two get conflated in other people's write-ups. Book the table when you book the room.

The room

I have had a Deluxe Seafront both times. Twenty-three square metres on an upper floor of the annex, which means a contemporary room and not a period one, with a balcony on the gulf.

A bed with a rose-coloured headboard against fluted grey panelling, round wall lights either side
Fluted panelling, a rose headboard, two round lights. Restrained, and it stays out of the way.
A walk-in shower in grey marble with fluted vertical light tubes beside it
The shower. Grey marble and ribbed glass tubes, which is the one place the room shows off.
A bathroom in grey marble with an oval basin on a dark vanity, a mirror between two vertical light tubes and a heated towel rail
The rest of it. Marble, an oval basin and a heated rail, and the light tubes again.

Twenty-three square metres is compact and the hotel does not pretend otherwise. What you are buying is the floor you are on and the door onto the air. Sit out there at four in the afternoon in winter, when the gulf goes the colour of tin and the promenade fills up below, and the arithmetic makes sense.

Three Codage bottles in a row on a grey marble shelf
Codage, in the bathroom. Replaced daily and nobody asks you about it.
A Nespresso machine with cups and a black box above an open minibar drawer of Greek bottles
Coffee upstairs, and a minibar that is mostly Greek, which is more than most hotels bother with.
A small balcony with a chair and a table behind tall glass, the flat grey water of the gulf beyond
The balcony in December. Twenty-three square metres indoors and this outside, which is the whole argument.
Slippers on a grey bath mat woven with the ON monogram, feet in them
The monogram is on the bath mat as well. The letters are the restaurant's initials, every time you see them.
A stairwell seen from above, a cluster of white globe lights hanging down the well past an iron balustrade
The stairwell from the top. The globes hang the whole height of it and this is the view nobody takes the lift for.
A courtyard from several floors up, a green planted wall down one side, a glass-sided water feature and cane chairs on grass
The courtyard from above, which is the only way to see how it was put together.

The roof

A rooftop bar behind a wall of glass, cane chairs and low cream seating facing the flat blue water of the Thermaic Gulf
The roof in the middle of the day. The glass carries the ON mark, and beyond it the gulf runs to Olympus on a clear afternoon.

The bar runs along the top of the building and it looks at water from one end to the other. Thessaloniki faces southwest, so the sun sets into the gulf from up here, and for about twenty minutes the whole terrace is the colour of the inside of a peach. That is the hour to be up there. Afterwards it is a pleasant bar with a dark view, and you would do better to go downstairs and eat.

Cane chairs and low tables on a rooftop terrace at dusk, the gulf and the far shore beyond the glass
The same terrace at the end of the afternoon in December. It is cold and nobody leaves.
A rooftop bar counter with pale green stools, staff behind it and the sea through the windows
The counter inside. In winter the glass comes down and the room works anyway.
A courtyard wall covered in dense green planting, with cane chairs on grass below
The courtyard, which is the other outdoor room. No sea at all, and in August that is the point.

There is also Tiger Loop, an all-day bar off the lobby with a different set of references, and a courtyard planted so thickly on one wall that you forget the street is on the other side of it. For a hotel of sixty rooms that is a lot of places to sit, and in a city where the weather turns over four days in December, it matters.

What I would tell you before you book

Say Deluxe Seafront, confirm the balcony, and when they offer you the upgrade on arrival, ask whether it is still on the sea. That one question is worth more than anything else on this page.

Book two nights. The rate needs them and the city deserves them.

Eat downstairs the first night. You can go out on the second, and you will have something to compare it with.

Go up to the roof an hour before the sun goes down, and then come back down.

Two stays, one in April and one over Christmas, and the winter one was better. I have not had a room on the courtyard side, I have not seen the suites, and I have not eaten the tasting menu, so those are gaps and I have left them as gaps.

The sun low over the flat water of the Thermaic Gulf, seen through the vertical mullions of a window
Late afternoon from the room. This is the thing you are paying the supplement for and it arrives every day for free.

Where it is

Leoforos Nikis 5, on the seafront, five minutes from Aristotelous Square. Booked through Classic Travel, where the house sits under SLH withIN. That rate carries an upgrade to the next category on arrival when one is free, breakfast for two every day, a credit to spend in the house, early arrival and late departure subject to the day, and wifi. It needs two nights before any of it applies, which is the only condition of its kind on this site, so a single night here is a room and nothing more. And at this house the upgrade needs a question attached: the categories above Deluxe Seafront are not all on the sea, so ask for it to be confirmed as seafront or declined. Send me your dates and I will put the rate and the room in front of you, with the credit figure, which I can tell you and cannot print.

Before you book

The questions people send me about ON Residence.

Where is it, and is the waterfront the right place to stay?
Leoforos Nikis 5, on the seafront promenade, at the end nearest Aristotelous Square. Aristotelous is about five minutes on foot, the Roman forum and the Bezesteni market about fifteen, and the White Tower a twenty-minute walk along the water in the other direction. Yes, the waterfront is the right place. Leoforos Nikis is where Thessaloniki walks in the evening, and the hotel opens straight onto it, so you are in the city's own routine from the moment you step out of the door.
What is the Deluxe Seafront room actually like?
Twenty-three square metres, upper floor of the newly built annex, king bed, a desk, blackout curtains and proper soundproofing, a walk-in shower, Codage products, a Nespresso machine and a minibar. The scheme is restrained: fluted grey panelling, a rose-coloured headboard, round wall lights. It is a contemporary room and it does not pretend to belong to 1926, which I think is the right call, since the historic part of the building is downstairs where you spend your evening. The balcony is the reason to book it: a table, a chair and the gulf.
Should I eat at Olympos Naoussa, and what is it like now?
Yes, and on your first night. The room is the restored 1920s dining room with a mezzanine round it, a coffered ceiling painted pale green, glass globes hanging at two heights and a patterned floor. Dimitris Tasioulas cooks Greek food that has been thought about and not simply reproduced: moussaka built on beef cheek and oxtail, seafood youvarlakia in a seafood avgolemono, trigona Panoramatos done with cardamom cream. It is in the Michelin Guide. Book it separately when you book the room, because a bed upstairs does not hold a table downstairs.
What is the difference between the Michelin Key and a star?
They are two different things and the distinction matters when you are reading reviews. ON Residence holds One Michelin Key, which is a distinction for the hotel itself. Olympos Naoussa is listed in the Michelin Guide as a restaurant and that is a separate entry. A Key is not a star. Nobody here claims it is, and it does get quoted loosely elsewhere, so this is worth knowing before you set your expectations for dinner.
Is it worth coming in winter?
I have been in April and at Christmas and the Christmas stay was the better one. The building is lit from the street, the restaurant is decorated without being silly about it, and the waterfront is full every evening because Thessaloniki takes the season seriously. The gulf in December is grey and flat and the light off it in the afternoon is the best light the balcony gets all year. The rooftop is a shorter proposition in the cold, so plan the sunset and go down afterwards.
What does the SLH withIN rate carry here?
An upgrade to the next category on arrival when one is free, breakfast for two every day, a credit to spend in the house, early arrival and late departure when the day allows, and wifi. The condition to know is the two-night minimum, which applies to the brand and not to this hotel alone, and below two nights none of it applies. The credit is a fixed amount that I am not allowed to publish, so ask me and I will tell you the figure before you decide. And see the upgrade question above, because here that benefit needs a condition attached to it.

Something else you want to know? Write to me and I will answer it here.

The dining room decorated for Christmas, a large blue-lit tree sculpture suspended over the laid tables A breakfast buffet of pastries, fruit and cakes on a wooden counter above a patterned tile floor Eggs benedict on toasted bread with rocket and ham, beside a glass of orange juice The lit 1926 facade on Leoforos Nikis at night, columns and tall windows with Christmas wreaths across the ground floor A bottle of Gosset Grande Reserve in a dark bucket of ice A pair of shoes from above on a geometric tiled floor in grey, white and ochre

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