Annie - Fine Cooking — Restaurant in Athens

Some very tasty food but with disappointment on the night. Little attention to detail for a restaurant that has "fine" in the title (and prices set accordingly) and customer service leaves a lot to be desired.

The concept is that all dishes are made for sharing and the waiting staff suggested that they are best enjoyed if they bring it one at a time. What a great idea; if only they could also follow up with taking the empty plates away before bringing the next ones rather than reaching out right in front of diners while they are eating the next dish.

We ordered a clam dish with trahana which came in two separate plates. The two could not be eaten together, as the clams were tiny and had to be eaten by hand. Presumably the clam broth had been used in the trahanas making. Conceptually, separating the two did not make much sense to us but sadly the main issue was that we found stones in the clam plate. The saddest thing though was that, when we told the staff, the first reaction was to justify why there may have been grit in the clams rather than to try and understand our concern. We had to insist by showing the stones at which point they realised it was not grit. A common thread in the service, where, on arrival, they insisted that it was us that had got the booking wrong, instead of accepting the situation and offering an acceptable solution (in the end there is a 50% chance that one of the parties was wrong, so why spoil the start of the diners' evening).

We ordered one dessert to finish, which was exceptional and utterly scrumptious. On receiving the bill, this was offered for free with apologies from staff.

Although the food was generally good, it was overshadowed by the awkward service and general atmosphere. Interestingly, these need to be "un-noticeable" so that the food can be the real hero, which was not the case here.

With so much hype for the place, the lengthy preambles from waiters on the food and the prices charged, we would have expected a better overall experience and more attention to detail in the food as well (stones in the clam dish and a bone found a fish fillet fish).

There is a lot of potential for the place to be great and I'm sure a lot of the issues will be resolved in the future, but sadly we will not be...

When will restaurants understand how important it is to do your utmost to provide your customers with tasty well prepared food, efficient service and a simple thank you while exiting the restaurant goes a long way.

This wasn’t the case at Annie-Fine Cooking.

We arrived for our 6:30 reservation and there were only a couple tables seated. The restaurant clearly wasn’t prepared for service as we ordered 2 glasses of rosé which were warm along with the bottle of water we ordered as well. Our waiter I must say was trying to be helpful and accommodating as he removed the wine as we waited for it to be chilled. We ordered 2 entrees the orzo with grouper and my husband had the squid with fava bean puree which was pretty tasteless. We were hungry so we did eat both meals but found them underwhelming. Too many ingredients and way too many capers.

When we finished our entrees we asked about dessert. They had 2 options a lemon and an orange cake which sounded interesting. We ordered the orange and the waiter returned to inform us that unfortunately it would not be ready for at least 20 minutes. This is what I mean by not prepared!

The sous chef proceeded to sit at a table behind us smoking a cigarette while we were trying to enjoy a glass of wine. Seriously you have no other place where you can smoke at 7:30 in the evening during service?

We paid our check and left the restaurant without a goodbye, thank you for coming nothing.

There are much better restaurants in Athens to dine in besides this one.

I would not...

What a hidden gem. I don't think I have ever had a more unique and enjoyable meal experience. The entire menu uses locally sourced ingredients to make very unique and outstanding dishes.

The saltwort salad we had was the most interesting thing I have eaten in years. The raw amberjack (fish) was unbelievably tasty and melted in the mouth. The saganaki (cheese) pasta with figs was outrageously good. Every dish was very different, easily stood on its own and honestly I wish I could have tried even more.

We actually ordered too much just because we were curious to try as much as possible. But everything was so delicious that we finished it all - the walk to the metro was a slow one!

It wasn't that expensive either - we had way too much food between two of us and spent 100 euros with two beers. Had we been a bit more conservative and ordered one dish less, we'd have spent 40 euros per person which in my opinion is incredible value for what I'd say was quite close to a Michelin star worthy fine dining experience.

Another thing to add - I was genuinely curious as to how this place has 4.4 stars (seemed low) so I looked at all the one star reviews and they almost all seem to be from 2 or more years ago. I wouldn't be surprised if they have changed chef since then because this is the easiest 5/5 I will...