Cerdo Negro 1985 — Restaurant in Athens

Wildly disappointing experience for the price point. You're paying for overdone plating at best.

Atmosphere was good initially. The decor is simple, rustic, quaint. Though there was an obvious mosquito problem, nothing seemed to be done about it. We had to ask for repellant, which was given 20 something minutes later in spite of the restaurant not being especially busy.

Service was surprisingly bad. We were seated at this restaurant for 2 HOURS in spite of making a reservation before hand. It wasn't as if we took them by surprise. The amount of time it took for bread and olives to come out of the kitchen was unreasonable. My dish (tartare) came out much later and I had no choice but to finish it before my spouse's dish came out almost half an hour later, even though we requested they come out together. The only thing that came out in a (barely) timely manner was wine.

I could have let all of this go if the food hadn't been as disappointing as it was.

Appetizer: Fresh bread and hot olives. When I say hot, I mean unreasonably hot. As in, 10 minutes later, they were still inedible. I can only assume they were buying time for the over an hour wait for the next dish. Tomato "Salad": I was interested in this up until the server upended an entire pitcher of 'liquid tomato' onto it. Fishing the 'salad' out of this was disappointing. Textures were interesting, but beyond that, I could taste nothing beyond the sauce/tomato/whatever the hell.

Bone Marrow/Tartare: This was a comically shallow bone. As in there was less than a spoonful of marrow. Tartare was poorly thought out, overwhelmed by jalapenos, and piled on the bone in a manner that made it tumble when you attempted to eat it. The only thing I can say for this dish is that the textures were nice enough. If you don't think too hard about the soggy chips.

Octopus/Potatoes: My spouse's dish was completely unsalted. The dish consisted of four whole pieces of octopus between two skewers. Again, textures were fine enough, but the lack of any seasoning whatsoever ruined the dish. My spouse simply didn't eat this, there was no point.

At the end of our 'experience', we brought up the issue of the octopus to the waiter and were treated like an inconvenience. They did not seem interested in whether we had a good experience and when we complained, we were told "I'll tell the chef" instead of any kind of damage control for a 100+ euro, unsalted meal that took hours to come out of...

Terrible service.

I emailed the restaurant in advance as it was for a special occasion (wedding anniversary while on holiday) and booked a table for 2 for the six-course tasting menu. They emailed back to confirm our booking and dietary requirements (1x pescatarian). However, when we arrived, we didn’t have a table and had to wait for them to set up our table, which included moving chairs from other areas of the restaurant into a different corner. After we were seated, the serving staff took our order, and the sommelier recommended some glasses of wine to pair with our food. The serving staff told us that our parties dietary requirements (1x pescatarian) could not be catered for, even though we arranged this via email in advance the booking. After some back and forth with the kitchen they agreed to accommodate 1x pescatarian menu. The sommelier served our first glass of the wine pairing, and then we waited for 57 minutes without contact before the first dish arrived. The second dish came immediately after the first. The third dish was another long wait with no explanation as to why. The sommelier apologised that our wine had gone warm while waiting, took away our warm wine, and poured us another half glass while we waited for our next dish. The sommelier had chosen wines for us based on our tasting menu dishes, 1x meat and 1x pescatarian. However, the entire tasting menu for us was served with no meat meaning the wine pairing did not work for all of us. This is not the sommeliers fault, this is down to the kitchen and serving staff. The rest of the tasting menu was a 3.5-hour wait for small plates of food that were good but definitely not worth the wait, especially considering that four out of six of the dishes on the tasting menu were also on the al a carte menu (which only had eight options on it in total). We spoke to the female serving staff about these issues, and her response was, “That’s just the way it is; we’re very busy, and I didn’t know you were waiting that long”! The only good thing about this restaurant’s service was the sommelier, and they didn’t even work there! They were only there helping out because it was a...

I have visited the restaurant on numerous occassions since my first visit. My penultimate visit was a disaster. We were served two courses with low quality meats with a lot of fat. So, when I revisited on Feb 4th 2023, I was genuinely worried. How did the restaurant perform? We ordered:

1. Olives, taramas and bread. The olives were very tasty but the bread could be more. We were served 5 pieces that we had to share between two people
2. Oysters: very tasty and delectable
3. Beef dumplings: Although tasty there were 2 major issues with this dish. First, the accompanying sauce was extremely salty. Second, when we tried to pick up the dumplings with the chopsticks they would fall apart. I was not able to get a proper bite out of it
4. Tartare on top of a bone marrow: for me this is the best dish on the entire menu
5. Chicken: Tasty but again the sauce was too salty. Additionally, at 18 euros, in my opinion it is an extremely overpriced dish.

Thus, taking into consideration my last two visits, I have to drop my rating to three stars.

We visited the restaurant on December 30th 2021, a party of two people. The place is situated in an off-Broadway area, at least in regards to the resto scene. We got:

1. Three dips accompanied with their focaccia baked in their wood burning oven. The focaccia was so good we asked for seconds. Dips were tasty too
2. Salad with beetroot and soil made from carob. Again real nice!
3. Tartare on top of half a bone including the bone-marrow and accompanied with home made chips. Marvelous and the main reason I will be going back
4. Beef with chocolate mole. Once again a revelation! Superb dish
5. Basque cheesecake: The perfect ending to a dreamy dinner.

This place's dishes are mainly based on their wood burning oven and this created a unique flavour profile. I definitely recommend and cannot wait to...