Maria's Tavern — Restaurant in Municipality of Agios Nikolaos

Absolutely disgusting. This is the first time in living memory that I've been to a restaurant that has smoking indoors. I thought that was no longer allowed by EU and Greek law, but it seems like Maria's tavern didn't get the message. We didn't realise until we were already served (that's when the smokers lit up), and my wife didn't want to make a fuss, so we stayed (if it had been just me, I would have apologised that I didn't want to have smoke with my dinner and left). I asked a waiter, "is smoking permitted here?" To which he replied "yes", and bustled on. So my dinner periodically tasted like cigarette smoke thanks to the woman who was chain smoking. Unsurprisingly those mouthfuls were disgusting.

Later, a couple with a baby in a pram turned up, and the smokers stopped then. After that the meal was much more pleasant.

Hence the one star review. Cigarette smoke in my meal? Yuck.

Outside of that, the food was ok, nothing exceptional, but quite edible, and quite cheap. Wouldn't come here again, even if it weren't ruined by awful and...

We arrived at Maria's Tavern after a great excursion from Spinalonga and a short hike through Plaka village and we were seated at one of the tables. At that time about 3 of the maybe 10 tables were occupied. When we let the waiter understand that we "only" wanted to have a drink with four people, something happened that I have never experienced in 30 years of vacation in Greece. The waiter's face froze, there was no more smile and the two tables that were standing together and at which we were sitting were separated by him, the chairs were pushed away and we were practically pushed together at a smaller table. All this without any significant communication. I certainly understand that at the end of the day at lunchtime it is better to allocate tables for eating and that money has to be earned during the season, but as already described there were enough tables free and unfortunately Greek hospitality is completely lost through...

I see a lot of people here being impressed with the seafood pasta. I went there for lunch with a group of friends from abroad, after visiting Spinalonga. They have been already 10 days in Crete, tried different restaurant every day and we all agreed this was the worst food we had till today. Maybe we made a mistake, not checking the reviews before, so we didn't order the seefood pasta. We tried a number of starters and souvlaki as main. Tzatziki and Souvlaki, were decent 3/5 but the rest of the food plus the whole experience was disappointing. The only really good thing was the beer "Cretan Kings" pale lager. You should all try it, but in a different restaurant imo. PS I also notice people mentioning on the reviews that prices are good. We paid 15 EUR per person which for the quality of the food is really bad. I regret not going to the gyros place next door that would be 5 times cheaper and probably...