To Arxontikon — Restaurant in Larnaca

Great Meze that offers something a little different to your typical traditional tavern.

I came here to eat lunch with my wife and ordered two Mezes (the minimum usually). For those who don't know, a Meze in Cyprus means a set menu in which lots of (supposedly) little plates of food are brought to the table and can be shared. This set menu is pretty standard across most traditional Cypriot taverns (with some minor variations) and usually includes a lot of food (a two person Meze can usually easily feed four people).

Where this restaurant has an edge is that: the Meze includes many traditional dishes that aren't offered as part of a Meze at other taverns the food is of a higher quality than some (not all) Meze restaurants it adds some more traditionally Greek dishes (as opposed to purely Cypriot dishes) to the mix as well

The above two points mean that the amount of food is slightly less (but could still feed at least three people), but I think it's well worth it, as most of the times a lot of food goes to waste in other restaurants.

The Meze included: Tzanziki Tahini Beetroot salad Potato salad Cypriot salad Grilled Halloumi Grilled Cyprus sausage Grilled oyster mushrooms + Quail eggs + Cheese balls + Grilled smoked Pancetta Pork souvlaki Chicken souvlakia Pork Mpifteki + Pork neck fillets Spetsofai + Lamb tsigariasto + Papoutsakia + Beef stifado +

The dishes that have a "+" next to them are dishes that are not really standard in Mezes from other restaurants and, in my opinion, are delicious.

In the end we ate as much as we could for lunch and brought the rest home and had enough for dinner for three people! (Like I said, the quantity is less than some other places, but still way more than enough).

I've added some photos of most of the dishes (though not all, because, as I've said, we couldn't eat everything, so we asked them to pack the rest up...

We had a TERRIBLE experience in our wedding day with the MANAGER CALLED ZETA. We talked to Zeta days before to arrange our lunch celebration after the civil wedding. We went to the restaurant two nights before to make the last payment and talk about the details, we told her we were choosing this place for the cozy space INSIDE, she indicate where she was going to arrange the table for the 20 guest we were having, she explained the dynamic of the meals and she PROMISED we were having desserts (traditional christmas cake, and some other things) The day of the wedding we arrived to the place and saw that the arranged table was set OUTSIDE with out our approval, it was a cold and rainy day, so we asked what happened because we agreed it was going to be inside. The manager came in the WORST ATTITUDE saying she never said the celebration was going to be inside the restaurant, we asked her a couple of times to please consider the bad weather as it was cold and we wanted a cozy place from the beggining. Long story short she was acting super angry making our wedding day the worst experience, my family came from Mexico to have a nice day and this WOMAN CALLED ZETA "THE MANAGER" didn´t take resposability and just made the experience the WORST! at the end her revenge was not giving our guest ANY DESSERT, she just served coffee and tea with a small ball of sugar saying that, that was the dessert she was going to served from the beggining. Of course not.. but she was angry and this was her "revenge". We are sad and disappointed with this experiencie. I don´t recommend this...

From the moment we stepped in I felt something was wrong but being with the baby we decided to stay. So, no waiter smiled for the entire dinner or to ask if everything is ok, or we want something etc. They were like robots, looking down and sad faces. Asking for the allergens? Better not, very difficult to find out for sure. We asked if the octopus comes with any sides they said no, they made us buy sides and guess what, the octopus came with sides...both of them. And of course we didn't touch the extra sides but payed anyway. The baby's food came last, we couldn't eat ours in front of her of course, we waited for hers to come so our got cold. Who brings the baby's food last? At least all together, it's common sense. And they knew it's the baby's because we asked for the allergens. When we asked one of the waiters for the check(bill) he replied that he will forget anyway so ask another...We've eaten in more than 500 maybe more restaurants in the whole world but this was one of the worst because of the staff. Unfriendly and somehow rude. Maybe they have customers because of the position of the restaurant, but they should be more open and welcoming. We didn't make any scene or say something, I prefered to write this review. But in other circumstances I wouldn't pay for the extra sides because they lied to us to rip us for more money. Shame on them. The food is average. This is my longest...