Piato — Restaurant in Municipality of Agios Nikolaos

Firstly, I am fairly disappointed in visiting this highly reviewed restaurant. I will start with the atmosphere as the restaurant was very well decorated, nice cutlery and welcoming staff.

Secondly the service was mostly good, but I will knock it down due to more than half the value of the bill (€50+) being added to my bill by what was seemingly an honest mistake. I do appreciate that the waitress and manager taking immediate accountability and the refunded amount in cash.

Lastly the food... I am no food coniseaur, but I do try to understand more about the food that I am eating, its sourced ingredients and the cooking techniques utilised. As this restaurant takes pride in its 'inventive creations' I will say that the tastier things we ate were the free desert and the Shrimp Saganaki (though, I would not mind usually, but the restaurant mentions ' authenticity' to which a Saganaki without its cheese fried truly diminishes its name.

The mains though well presented were disheartening as far as flavours go, though I know it's down to interpretation and the chef's intentions on the menu choices. The Sea bass was accompanied by mushy peas which unfortunately really made me reminisce on British Fish and Chips, though I do enjoy really took me away from the thought that I am on a Greek island filled with millennia of human history.

The Baked Tuna was over seasoned (cured heavier than you would sashimi preparation?) with salt to which the waiter excused me that 'Cretan fish are more saltier in taste' (this having no scientific backing and fish have their natural ability to balance their internal salt through osmoregulation.

My feedback on the dishes would be to reduce the amount of salt added and draw more focus to the natural flavours that Crete's land and ocean has to offer (though maybe this is what the restaurant interprets in its 'seasonal ingredients'. The authenticity could derive from traditional Cretan dishes but using different cooking styles, techniques or plating techniques to really show off the chefs' skills.

Thank you for reading and once again I am not a qualified food critic but genuinely want to understand what a restaurant attempts to present to its customers. However, by having an ethos of 'rooted in tradition, inspired by creativity', it is of concern that a restaurant may receive too many online reviews and lose touch with what it may have originally...

This restaurant was right up our street as we like to eat well and try something a little different every now and again - especially when abroad where many restaurants offer the same dishes over and over again. Well worth the 10 minute walk along the sea front from the main port / lake at Agios Nikolaou where most restaurants offer almost identical dishes.

We also find 'creative' restaurants either get it right or so wrong - fortunately these guys nailed it - every single dish was full of flavour, everything complementing each other perfectly. They are proud that every single ingredient is locally sourced - even down to the drinks (the Blonde Cretan beer was very tasty).

We went for 4 starters and 2 mains - "Kadaif" (Greeks would call this 'Kateifi' which is normally a sweet dessert my cousins back in London call the 'Hairy cake'. This was a fantastic twist as a savoury starter - Cretan cheese on top of a sweet olive jam and a crispy 'hairy' top) was by far our favourite - sweet and salty - WOW (and I normally don't eat Olives!), "Shrimp Saganaki" (seafood in a tomato and cheese sauce), "Crispy Smoked Eel" (you wouldnt know you were eating eel - very soft and flavoursome - amazing dish), "Leek Pie" and for mains the "Sea Bass" (juicy and served with pureed artichoke and peas) and "Giouvetsi" (Rice-like-pasta (orzo) - not the traditional way they do it - a big piece of white fish in the centre surrounded by squid - think of a sort-of Greek seafood risotto).

Portion sizes were decent for the price - not tiny morsels you'd normally associate with cuisine of this quality.

The two waiters who served us were also very friendly and accommodating to our family (1 overactive 11 month old baby and a noisy 5 year old!) and we felt very comfortable there despite the challenges of bringing young people to a nice restaurant - it didn't feel pretentious at all.

We'd love to come back and try more of the dishes, hope to see you again soon,...

The service and atmosphere at the Piato are it's best assets. However, we mostly go to restaurants to enjoy local cuisine. This is where Piato really disappointed. We ordered tarama, prawn saganaki, tuna and seafood pasta. This was our second week in Crete and by far the worst meal of the trip. The tarama tasted like extremely salty mayonnaise and nothing like a home made tarama we had elsewhere on the island. Prawn saganaki were ok, the prawns were well cooked but the cheese and some deep-fried objects were not of the quality you expect for the price and neither was a very plane sauce. The worst of all were the two mains, especially the tuna which was so salty and lacking any flavour that it was basically inedible and in fact I could not eat it. The presentation was also very poor. Seafood pasta was marginally better but the pesto was way too rich and killed most of the taste of the actual seafood. Not only this is not innovative Greek cuisine, this is very poor Greek cousine. In general, the food in Crete is of a very high quality, so it is very surprising to get such poor experience in such a highly rated restaurant. Having read some of the more recent reviews, it seems to be a recent trend developing. Perhaps they changed a chief or he took his eyes of the ball. Whatever the reason, we could not recommend Piato on the basis of the poor quality food being...