Plaka Greek Taverna - Okotoks — Restaurant in Alberta

Short version: this might be one of the worst restaurants in Alberta. Avoid it at all costs.

Long version: we arrived at 630 as per our reservation and found a nice little table. We sat down and a guy came over to give us some water. One of the glasses stunk of bleach so my wife ordered a drink hoping for a fresh glass which she did get. At around 640 we ordered our food, and enjoyed the nice atmosphere. The inside looks nice and clean and has a very Greek design (blue and white). At around 710 my wife got a second drink as food hadn't arrived. At 715 we joked about going accross the street at get pizza as we were rather hungry. Keep in mind dear reader this place was not full. Ahead of us was 2 maybe 3 tables. At 720 I asked my dining companions if we should just leave and it was decided I should go find out if our food was in fact coming from Greece itself (spoiler it wasn't).

I got up and went over to the bar and asked them what's the eta. They said oh soon. I said define soon (I assume this is when someone decided to start cooking our food). The staff then told me oh they were running a little behind for reasons I don't care about because I've been here for an hour at this point. Then then say we are next, but don't want to give me a time. Finally after a lot of prodding by me they say 3 mins (it took 10).

So finally the food arrives and honestly for 30 bucks a plate I feel massively ripped off. You get more food from an opa platter. You get better tasting food from an opa platter. You get your food in the same hour your order at opa.

I don't know how this place has good reviews. I assume they are paid reviews because this place is bad. Honestly you can make better food at home, for a fraction of the cost and much faster.

They then offered us a dessert to go for free but what they failed to mention was the dessert takes about annother 20mins to put in a box.

The biggest problem here was lack of communication (and bad food). If they told us when we sat down "hey our kitchen is staffed by the slowest sloth we could find, your dinner will be ready in an hour" we could have gone elsewhere and tried this place annother night. If they told us "hey our food is an inferior knockoff of opa" we could have tried either different food there or gone somewhere better. They could have comped something to make up for the wait, but no.

If you want Greek food, go to opa. It's 1/3rd the price and about 8 times better and takes 1/10th...

I don't normally write bad reviews, but this experience calls for it as a warning to others. We booked a table of 10 and arrived at 5:30 letting our server know that we had to to leave at 7:30. We didn't receive our food until 7:40. They were busy and seemed under staffed, and I get it, these things happen. But the reason I'm writing such a poor review is because of how the owner handled it. When we asked about our food she shot back every excuse in the book and acted like it was our fault for coming in when it was busy with a tight timeline (even though we communicated this in advance). When our meal was finally complete and we recived our bill at 8:15 (delayed again) the owner was shocked that we asked for a discount because of course none of this was her fault she's just simply understaffed. After arguing with her, she finally gave the entire table $50 off a bill that was close to $1,000. Much of our table has spent years in the service industry, and we have a TON of respect for restauarant owners and the industry as a whole being understaffed at the moment, but you have to communicate with your customers and accept responsibility for all poor experiences that happen under your roof and try to leave the customers feeling happy. This situation could've been easily mitigated with touching base with our table and letting us know that the kitchen was slow, comping the wine, providing free dessert or oozo, but instead voicing our opinions that we should receive any kind of compensation for what was an error on the restaurants part was met with hostility. This place has the opportunity to be better than this, please use this as an...

So my rule is try anything twice. On neither occasion did Plaka fail to please. First is the service. The waiting staff are great, and at the helm is Kristos (sp?), a thoroughly Greek gentlemen who busies himself making sure every guest is enjoying themselves. His recommendations were spot on, and you can tell he's there because he loves his profession.

The first time I'd arrived I was actually going for a late, late lunch, they were already onto the dinner menu. I decided to go for it anyway. I had the Gemisti Kota, chicken breast stuffed with feta and spinach, with rice, green beans, and potatoes. The chicken was moist, tender, and bursting with flavour. As for the sides, these were not your run-of-the-mill variants. The rice was rich in flavour, I suspect saffron was involved. The green beans were served with a Mediterranean tomato sauce spiced with hints of cinnamon and cloves. The potatoes are cooked in a broth with lemon.

I returned for lunch with a colleague and tried the kleftiko roast lamb. This stew-like mix of lamb was great – I'm not often a lamb fan. My colleague, typically a meat eater, got the vegetarian moussaka...