ΦΟΥΡΝΟΣ ΒΕΝΕΤΗ 1948 | OMONOIA NEON — Restaurant in Athens

Very nice place with a large assortment of sweet and savory goodies... hurt by unfortunate Greek stinginess combined with a dash of surliness.

We sat in one of the outside tables, which did not have a menu. And waited. We saw a young waitress going by a few times, but we seemed to be invisible to her. Eventually I began calling her trying to be discreet, but she didn't pay heed. Eventually I had it and called it in an impossible to ignore voice. She came by, looking upset about my tone of voice, I asked for a menu and she brought it (after another wait, despite the fact that no one else was requiring anything). Then returned after a few seconds (literally!) asking if we knew what to order. My wife (who's far more polite than me...) reminded her she hadn't had enough time to even read the menu, to which our waitress huffed noticeably and left.

I should have mentioned that there are two large separate outside seating areas, and while a couple waiters tended the other, our waitress was the only one in ours... and even spent time on the other! (Whether she was supposed to tend tables in both areas or was just avoiding her annoying customers I don't know)

Eventually we managed to place our orders (simple breakfasts with pastries, orange juice and coffee) and waited. And waited. And waited. Bear in mind the place has a huge assortment of pastries ready to sell, so the only work needed was to process the juices (if they weren't preprocessed) and brew one coffee.

When they finally arrived, they were pretty good. But by then we were sick of waiting. What we thought would be a quick stop for breakfast turned out to take the best part of the morning.

Dear owners, either hire an extra waiter to help the waitress, or if she is surly by nature and no amount of help will change her, hire a nicer one...

Great selection of sweets and Italian-style focaccias, croissants, and rolls but the service was downright appalling.

No signs to let customers know that if you want to dine in, you need to seat yourself upstairs. I spent time carefully choosing my order at the counter, only to be told halfway through to go upstairs and repeat it all again. On the way up, the manager, Lefteris, told me to “forget” the order I’d just made and start over.

Upstairs, the waitress expected me to recall the exact name of the item, then pointed me to a QR code without explaining that it was just a menu, not a way to order or pay. When I figured this out myself and started to give my order again, Lefteris suddenly reappeared with the order I’d already made downstairs, even though he told me to redo it. He claimed it was “heated as requested,” but it was still cold inside. One of the custard sweets I asked for never arrived at all.

When I mentioned the confusion, Lefteris arrogantly brushed me off, saying I “shouldn’t be confused” because apparently he had explained everything. What arrogance! To top it off, the waitress upstairs tried to “educate” me (a native Greek) in her foreign accent that “this is Greece” and QR codes are only menus. Thanks for the reminder — I had no idea where I was!

I was ready to spend about €100 on sweets to take back to Australia, but after this circus, I walked out. Venetis might dominate the market in Greece, but with service like this, I sincerely hope real competition...

This bakery is one of the nicest i have seen as far as the inside architecture and design is concerned. Must see.. We were two for breakfast. There were so many sandwishes, croisants and other types of bread and cakes that we needed to go inside and show the waiter what we would like to be brought outside to our table. We started with a sandwich and a croissant and asked to have them heated a bit. For this a coffee with milk and a cappuccino. The sandwiches were bone cold but we were offered to have them heated. The coffee came without milk and the cappuccino was semi warm. You need to know that the prices announced inside the bakery increase with 1 euro when brought outside - around 8 meters. We ordered a caprese salad and one more coffe. The saled was excellent and the coffee tasty. Total price 30 euros. Tip: buy what you want inside and bring it to a nice...