Maria's Souvlaki Greek Restaurant — Restaurant in Sidney

TERRIBLE!! Me and my boyfriend were visiting Victoria and wanted some Greek food since I'm Greek, my whole family has came to the states from Greece and we just love the food, we saw the reviews and decided to give it a try since they all seemed so wonderful. When we showed up to order the older woman in the front who took our order didn't say one word, not even a grin, nothing- that's fine it didn't bother us we ordered our food (chicken souvlaki, lamb gyro) and sat down to wait for it. After a while long wait she brought my chicken souvlaki and the lamb gyro to our table and I realized the "souvlaki" came wrapped in pita bread, with onions and tomatoes like a gyro. I'm from Lefkada/Patra and no where in greece that I know of does a souvlaki come served like a gyro and not on a skewer. We kindly told the lady that I wanted the chicken on a skewer and not wrapped up in a pita bread because that's what I know a souvlaki has always been, instead of apologizing and asking to bring what I wanted she started throwing the chair at the next table and yelling at us that the "souvlaki" is chicken wrapped in pita. My boyfriend got up to ask at the front counter and she continued to argue him, the chef finally asked what's wrong and told us he'd make the order I had wanted. Although we only got some pieces of chicken on a plate without the skewer it was closer than having a gyro called a souvlaki. The food was decent but compared to the customer service it was just an embaressement, not only to her restaurant but to my country because that's what customers were perceiving out of her customer service. After leaving we saw another table complaining about the same issue I had and her reacting the same rude way to them. We will gladly be taking our business elsewhere when we revisit, truly the most terrible customer service we've...

A friend took us here for dinner today - and I don’t have many good things to say. The pricing strategy makes zero sense. A pita wrap costs about $9.50 but a single lamb skewer is $10. Also, the skewer doesn’t come with a side it is literally just a single skewer on a plate with tzatziki sauce. The customer service is honestly atrocious - I don’t think it’s because the servers don’t want to serve customers, I think the management doesn’t actually care and treats their customers like a burden which rubs off the rest of the way through the restaurant.

The chef or manager (clearly the head fella) yelled at one of the servers in front of about 5-6 customers outside today. Something about a mix up with take out orders; he was frustrated because it was getting busy but there was absolutely no need for him to talk to anyone like that, especially a coworker. I certainly will never eat here again and I suspect unless they change direction on a number of things they’ll continue to perform with mediocrity.

The food is not worth the price, the atmosphere just doesn’t have that wonderful boisterous Greek feeling & there is nothing to be desired from the service. If folks are enjoying this place they’ve never been to a real Greek restaurant in their life. I normally don’t leave reviews and maybe today was just a bad day - but honestly I had to come on here after that grown man yelled at that woman like that in front of all of us. Crazy unprofessional and you shouldn’t support businesses that treat people the way this business treats it’s staff and customers.

Nooo thanks! I...

While I would normally rate a restaurant very highly based on the quality of food alone, in this particular case I am concentrating on how nickel and diming a customer for a meal can detract from an experience. There is no way that an establishment should keep adding up the costs of food on a plate like some mediocre school cafeteria, but that's exactly how I felt when we visited: No rice, no potatoes, but you can have fries, or pita with the five or six pieces of meat on your skewer... at an additional cost. That amounts to over $1 per cube of meat served!!! Yes, the food tasted fine, but when you get very little service at an over-the-counter order style restaurant, you better have good value too... and I definitely thought this was over-priced for what we got!

Update: a friend convinced us to give Maria's a second chance...

We visited on a Wednesday night and while we were there the restaurant did a bustling business, with about half the the chairs occupied at any given point, and plenty of pickups.

The staff were helpful and smiling.

But the food took almost an hour to be brought to our table! I thought our calamari would come early given it was ordered as an apply, but no, it arrived along with our gyros...

It all tasted good. Not terrific, but not bad. And hot.

Still seems pricey given you pay extra for any side...