Kalamaki Bar — Restaurant in Athens

You can certainly do a lot better than this place in athens. There is nothing special about the food and the hygiene is a little questionable too . We were greeted with a classic tourist trap, the water bottle thats waiting for you to be opened and get charged for while they have clearly had perfectly fine bottled tap water ready to be served. That's ok since at least you have the option to return the bottle unlike some other places, however the dirty utensils are unforgivable in my book. On our table we had a nice pair of fork and knife nicely covered in dried food wrapped in a napkin that was the first red flag as i find it hard to imagine someone would wrap these without noticing how dirty they are. Next issue was that in fine print you could find things related to your food that i believe should have been mentioned by the waiter or at least if the reason for mentioning was transparency you could have put it on the same page as the food no at the bottom corner of a whole other page. I'm referring to the kabab being frozen or the option to choose the side dishes instead of just bringing whatever is available... My next problem is with greek salad, im not greek so please let me know if this is tradition,but my opinion is the following: its a simple salad you got the olives that are not pitted ok fine, the feta cheese that comes in a block ok it looks nicer that way but for heavens sake please cut the tomatoes a little bit? Some of your lets say chopped tomatos were bigger than an average whole tomatoes and hidden right under the cheese... its not like you are doing a whole lots for this salad in first place... Last shot to the heart was the tip culture, im happy to tip thats not an issue but while you have provided dirty utensils, didn't get a proper order and you weren't even our waiter all that said im still fine with tipping but this was the first place that waiter directly asked how much should i write for the tip, every other place that i have been to waiter gives you the machine and in some places even turn around till you put the tip and put your pin code. Overall, there was nothing memorable about the food, atmosphere or the service so apart from not going back myself i suggest you look for anywhere else as well since unless you get food poisoning chances are they...

First meal in Greece after some walking around to see the city, on our way to our hotel. Definitely an experience. The servers here don’t wait on you, you have to go out of your way to get one to your table. Eye contact, waving (not exaggerated waving), or raising your hand will do nothing; you basically have to get up, leave your table and track one down. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of staff here, but servers will walk right by you and ignore you. I even elbowed one accidentally as I was turning to try to get his attention, and he simply continued to walk on by without any reaction.

When you order, we’ve found it’s better when one person does all of the ordering; they got confused when they had to ask each person what we wanted. If you don’t finish your food, the person clearing your table will ask you why you didn’t finish it. Salads cost more than meat dishes and even desserts are less expensive. Still a reasonable price overall but portions were on the smaller side as well.

I enjoyed the freshness of the salads and the tzatziki was out of this world. The kalamaki skewers were very tasty and I enjoyed the orange sponge cake (more of an orange steamed pudding in my opinion), but not everyone agreed, and the horrible service ruined it for us. I also got the wrong salad but I was so hungry I did not want to wait another 10 minutes to go through the tracking down and reordering process again, especially because no one will check up on you (so the wrong salad does not play a part in my rating but the thought of having to go the the additional hassle was not worth the energy).

We have heard many stories about the charming conversations with the staff at restaurants in Athens (in general), and how the portions are large and family style, and how they will treat you with a drink or a dessert or some sort of pleasantries.

Not here. We would...

I discovered this place while walking around close to where I was staying in Athens. What a vibrant area of many places to eat and discover.

I ordered the sausage and asked the server for a recommendation for the main and he said the t-bone.

They both came out at the same time. The sausage tasted great, was cooked perfectly. It was grilled and had a nice crust to it.

I ordered the steak medium as after I came from Florence, where I normally would order it MR and it came out very rare, I didn't want to make the same mistake again. Well, this time it did come out medium and it was still very juicy and tender. I decided on a side of rice with it.

Both dishes were amazing and was great. After they were done, I tried the traditional Greek dessert they had on the menu. It was like biscuits made with chocolate. I wasn't sure what to expect, however, it wasn't a hard biscuit, it was very soft. I only was abke to finish half of it as I was very full.

The staff was very friendly and super attentive. They were great. The atmosphere was like an open patio even though I technically had a table inside. A small band came by outside to play and sing music like street buskers. That said, if you don't like the smell of cigarette smoke, it can linger in from the outside.

The place is supposed to be famous for their kebabs, so I ordered some for take out to bring back to the place where I was staying...