Barbounaki — Restaurant in Athens

The food was actually quite good at Barbounaki.

But the experience was marred by our final bill being mysteriously inflated by 30%. This, on top of paying the price for "500 grams" of fish, and receiving...I'm going to guess...no more than 2-300 grams?

Since I don't carry a metric scale with me, I decided to let the "500 grams" thing go without comment.

But when I saw the bill had become seriously inflated in the time it took to retrieve the credit card machine, I spoke up and questioned the significantly higher new total.

When confronted by this, the waiter, who previously spoke fluent English, became mysteriously semi-literate.

As far as I could understand...he insisted that they had forgotten to charge us something on the original bill...maybe, for some unclear item...or possibly items plural, somewhere, somehow...for something that we had ordered...

...or maybe something that we had thought about ordering...or that perhaps someone else had ordered...at some other restaurant, in some city, somewhere.

Or...something like that. The longer we talked, the less I understood.

Eventually our once-fluent-waiter was only able to reply to us in ancient Latin, punctuated by shrugs and nervous tics.

So anyway, such was the need for the bill magically increasing in price.

Normally, I'd just consider it an honest mistake. But I've experienced this same mysteriously-confusing final-bill-inflation half a dozen times elsewhere in Athens in the last two weeks.

For a country that derives 25% of it's GDP from tourism, there is an unfortunate scam-culture very prevalent in the country.

Having visited Greece in both summer and winter many times, I cannot help but notice the "mystery pricing" and "confusing bill dance" never occur during winter months...

...and yet every fourth restaurant during the summer seems to suffer from bizarre rates of constant "confusion" with mysterious charges arriving on the final bill total.

It's too bad...the restaurant does indeed serve good food. It's a shame to mar the experience...

The prices were higher and the food was not as good as many other restaurants where we've eaten in Athens. The main reason we won't be going back to Barbounaki, though, is because the vibe I got from our waiter seemed snobby. The waiter acted as if he were doing us a huge favor by allowing us to eat there. When I first arrived it was still early, a little before 6pm, and I was alone. Still standing, I asked a waiter if I could please have a beer, and he said, "We're a restaurant. If you want beer, there's a store down the street." I laughed and told him I'd also like something to eat, so he showed me a menu. After I ordered a salad, some bread and a carafe of wine, the waiter finally told me it was okay to sit down. Around 7pm my wife and daughter joined me for dinner. When I asked the waiter if it would be alright for us to move to one of the many (90%+) empty tables inside he said "No," because, supposedly, "All of the inside tables are already reserved." It seemed kind of hard to believe, as the place was still almost completely empty, but I just figured maybe they were expecting a big group or something. The waiter turned an outdoor heater on for us, and we ate outside, which ended up being fine. Even by the time we had finished eating, paid our bill and left to go home, around 8:30pm, more than half of the tables inside the restaurant were still empty. For some reason, though, the waiter felt obliged to mention to me just before we left, "You're lucky you got this table tonight, because all of our other tables were already reserved." It just seemed like such an absurd and inappropriate thing to say to a guest, especially since the restaurant was...

Excellent seafood menu in a casual restaurant frequented by locals. The menu is printed in both Greek and English. It is similar to a tapas restaurant where you order small plates to be shared although there are several larger main courses if you wish. We are a couple and shared the red mullet, feta salad with peppers, grilled bread, anchovies and orange pie with ice cream and a bottle of white wine. We enjoyed our meal so much that we went back another night and had the small Papaioannou salad which is mostly lettuce but still very good and who can complain at 8 euros. We enjoyed it after the meal in the European style. We each had a small bowl of the fish soup which was delicious and shared a plate of grilled sardines with an order of grilled bread. We shared a plate of the seafood linguini, another excellent dish, and a pichet of white wine. We were so full we didn't have room for dessert but the waiter gratuitously brought us 4 Greek petit fours to round out the meal. After eating at a couple of Michelin starred restaurants during our visit to Athens this little gem was a nice change of pace. Very reasonably priced too!! We had reservations at 8pm both nights and the restaurant was a little quiet but I think the Greeks, like the Spanish, prefer a later dinner hour so just because there are empty tables doesn't mean they aren't reserved. If we had this restaurant in our neighborhood we would...