Athinaion Politeia — Restaurant in Athens

Came to eat dinner with my daughter. It didn’t seem very busy, but we waited more than half an hour for the food to arrive. When it finally did, we got appetizers and main course at the same time. This was annoying in itself, but it was made so much worse by the fact that the table was absolutely too small for so many plates. My main course was served on a wooden board, that was just dumped on top of the plate that was already on the table, resulting in a very unstable setup. My daughter ordered spaghetti carbonara, and was served spaghetti with mushrooms. Not a single piece of bacon or ham in sight. When I pointed out to the waiter that we ordered carbonara I was just told that this WAS carbonara. At this point I really wished that I was American or Italian or something, and had been raised to loudly complain, instead of being a meekly Dane, who’ll say ‘thank you’ while being beaten with a dry steak. The situation didn’t improve when the waiter added a far larger tip than I wanted without asking, and then just informed me with an ‘I added this amount, ok’. Again, cursing my Danish upbringing, I ok’d it so we could get out of there and get my daughter some food she actually liked. But, to be fair, my food was decent if a bit dry, and no one was directly unpleasant, so I’ll give...

One gets the feeling that if one intends to order food, one should sit at one of the tables directly adjacent to the restaurant building itself. It seems pretty clear from the photographs attached to the reviews, that those who sat beside the restaurant had a vastly different experience from those (like us) who sat across Apostolou Pavlou in the large patio area. Our main goal was just to have a drink, some mezze, and peoplewatch on a comfy couch - but if we had been actually hungry or thirsty, we would’ve been in trouble. To call our service apathetic would be to complement it. It was slow, our food was incorrect, and it was delivered with something bordering on aggression. The server was so disengaged that later when we tried to pay, he attempted to include the table of teenagers next to us on our bill - assuming, I suppose, that they were our children… which might’ve been plausible except for the fact that they were there long before we ever arrived and only spoke German. Like I said, we were in no rush and we didn’t want much, so the situation didn’t affect us. But had our needs been any different - ie: had we HAD needs - it could’ve been an...

Apparently it's "tradition" to be served a full bottle of water (1L) even if you just wanted to have a cup of coffee. My girlfriend and I were very surprised when we found out that we needed to pay for the water bottle as well even though we hadn't touched it. I mean it's just 1,50€ which wasn't the problem at all. This negative surprise just added up to all the negative experiences we made at this café.

First of all, the espresso freddo that I ordered was extremely sour. That only means that the person who operates the espresso machine doesn't know what she or he is doing. The espresso was so under-extracted to leave that horrendous taste. You expect just better from a café. The cappuccino latte that my girlfriend ordered was okay.

Secondly, the service was very rude. We didn't feel welcomed at all. Especially, after we ordered just two drinks. Initially, we came for an afternoon bakery snack and a coffee, but after seeing the menu and the motivation of the service, we just had our coffee.

We sat outside and enjoyed the view on the Akropolis which is probably the only positive we...