Noel — Restaurant in Athens

One very positive experience. A little bit of background: it has a Xmas theme all year around (decoration). it is very popular, you'd have to reserve, especially on weekends. food: away from greek taverna style, with pretty much European style, with some greek touches. To the experience we had: service: excellent service. They did, however, make a mistake and brought us a wrong wine, we noticed after they popped it open, but they exchanged at once. Waiting style: introducing themselves, explaining dishes, suggesting choices. Bravo!! Food taste: also great. We had 5-6 dishes to share as a bigger group, which gave us the chance to get a rounder opinion. Everything was tasty. I dare to say, the appetisers better than the main dishes :-) Burrata with tomato and fig chutney excellent, carpaccio great, potatoes with truffle (oil?) great. Main dishes: the rib-eye is maybe to be avoided if you're coming from US/Europe, it won't be the best you've eaten and it's quite pricey. Try the cooked veal meat - it's the closest to a greek dish and it's delicious. Pork schnitzel - it's ok. Some pasta dishes were interesting, like the risotto with the black squid ink (instagram-able :-P) or the shrimps risotto also great. Expect to pay around 20-25€ for a...

17:45 the waitress comes with the “brunch menu” 18:00 we are about to order and we choose among a few dishes from the menu that was given to us (pancakes, deserts etc) and that’s when we get informed that we cannot order anymore because the kitchen closes at 18:00 and reopens at 19:00, waitress walks away 18:15 another waitress comes to inform us that we can actually order and so we replace our “brunch menu” order, only to find out that now we can only choose from the “dinner menu”. We didn’t want to order proper food as we were there for coffee and desert. 18:30 after we have been trying to draw the attention of the waiters for 30’ the “manager” arrives, we explain the situation just to get the reply: “I’m sorry we can’t help you” It was clear from his expressions he didn’t care at all and wanted to get rid of us so he could give away the table to other customers. This is a beautiful place but clearly they are incapable of handling the volume of customers so the overall experience is poor. 45’ waste of our time eventually we left. Shame for such...

The interior is beautiful, but the quality of the dishes and drinks is average. Our food wasn't really warm when we received it, it was more on the cold side. It was good, though. The drinks were, for my taste, bad. They weren't balanced, and they tasted more of alcohol than the other ingredients. The music was far too loud, we couldn't hold a conversation because we had to yell at each other over the table. Even after moving seats, it didn't do much. The waiter was nice but we had to wait forever to order and especially to pay. We were disappointed, so we left after finishing our food. If you're coming for the drinks, you'll be disappointed. We were four people, and none of us enjoyed the stay very much. If you're coming for the interior and for a hook up, it's your place to be. For good drinks, you should try L'Alchemiste a few minutes...