Gran Aladino — Restaurant in Municipality of Central Corfu and Diapontia Islands

Terrible food and terrible owner with the worst attitude. Honestly don’t understand the high praise. If you read any of the other critical reviews, you’ll see the owner Maria writes some snarky comments back about how other restaurants serve frozen food or undermine other places to make them look better, and gets generally defensive instead of taking onboard feedback lmao, so here’s another one for you to get sassy over. Can’t wait to see what attitude you showcase publicly.

Starters were edible I guess, nothing to write home about, but the mains were genuinely the worst meal we’ve had on this island over our 5 day stay. You’d think the high price (overpriced if you ask me) would promise some quality but not in this case. Loads of menu items missing and unavailable. So what if it’s off season? Are customers not as valuable as high-season ones? I don’t think so. Every other restaurant we’ve been to didn’t have this “supply” issue. Sort it out.

For mains, the moussaka was the worst I’ve ever had, no flavour, as if it was a reheated frozen meal. My boyfriend got the chicken with peppers & rice. Literally looked and tasted like a plate of meal prepped food. Actually no, I could make better meal prep than that, and for much less than €18 😂 chicken was dry af… do better please.

Lastly, when it came to paying, we were the last customers in the place and somehow there was a card reader issue? The card machine charged us 80% of the main bill but apparently it wasn’t able to do the rest of the 20%??? The owner wanted cash for the remainder but we didn’t have any so she suggested to drive us to an ATM to make us get money out for the remaining €7 at 10:30pm at night? Dodgy af. Usually restaurant owners would probably just say sorry for the inconvenience, this is on us etc etc… and when I took a picture of the receipt to figure out what it said in English, she immediately said “I’m not trying to scam you”… seems weird af to jump to that conclusion just because I took a picture of the receipt???

When we declined to get in her car to get cash she changed her tone and said ok we will do the payment in the office on a machine?? So what was the issue in the first place then? Honestly the weirdest experience and would not recommend this place to anyone.

Only saving grace is that the waiters are quite polite and nice, and that there were some cute cats.

EDIT: lol Maria your attitude towards criticism is hilarious. If you had another machine why didn’t you just offer it in the first place, instead of suggesting us to withdraw cash at 10pm for your technical issue???? Absurd 😂 your place is the only place in Greece where somehow 20% of the bill couldn’t be paid on the machine and needed cash. So dodgy, just admit you wanted the cash to pay less tax or something. At least...

We went to this restaurant as a group of 3 with very high hopes. With 2 vegetarians in our group we were excited to have a range of options on a menu for once. Unfortunately 2 out of the 3 main dishes we had were really bland - the seafood risotto and the vegan moussaka. We complained about both and they agreed that one was bland and took it off our bill and gave a free coke to that person. Unfortunately they got incredibly defensive regarding the complaint about the mousaka. Before I commented on it to the restaurant I asked the others in our group to try it and both agreed it wasn't good and one said that it tasted like a ready meal (we thought it resembles the Quorn cottage pie ready meal from the UK which is pretty awful). When the waiter asked why I hadn't eaten much of my mousakka (around 10/20% of it) I explained I didn't enjoy it I was told that I was wrong and that they had eaten mousakka since they were a child and this is how it was supposed to be and that was the recipe. I was told to look at the comments online and that the chef was the best, I found this reaction very unprofessional. I was then told to speak to the manager who proceeded to ask me if I even knew how to cook soy meat alternative which is an unreasonable thing to say, she said she wouldn't come to the UK and tell us we made our food wrong (FYI I never said it was made wrong, I just said it was bland and I didn't eat it because it wasn't enjoyable at all) I was asked to stop talking because they were busy and I was taking her time which I was really shocked by, the manager was extremely rude in this situation and was obviously personally offended by us saying the food was unsatisfactory. I'm really surprised by the good reviews of this place as it was awful, it's such a shame as we were really looking forward to this meal as there were so many vegetarian options which is rare. Honestly I would tell anyone to avoid it at all costs, awful food and awful customer service. Save yourself the stress and don't waste your money.

The waiters and the manager didn't wear their masks properly the whole time, they were pulling them down so their noses were out and sometimes pulling them down completely, they offered to try our food when we complained which isn't very covid friendly at all. I'm not sure they understand there is a pandemic happening right now!

There is an amazing restaurant just down the road from this one called Limani which has amazing food, good vegetarian options and lovely staff - I recommend you visit there instead!

These guys need some lessons in customer service, I'll be interested to see if their response is on par with this bad experience. (Ps: read all their responses to any other bad review and you'll understand what I mean - this person doesn't...

We went to this restaurant as it's 4.5 stars and good reviews made it seem perfect. Despite a free nibble of bread and vegan dip to begin, as well as accomodation for a gluten free diet, both the service and food were unimpressive. The Baba ganoush starter was around €8 and consisted of the smallest bowl of dip (around 2 tablespoons) and 2 of the most pathetic slices of bread (very thin, no more than 2 inches long). Then a long wait for the mains. Whilst the main meals (white snapper and mix grill) were tasty, we were swarmed by wasps the entire time. As were other guests - of whom were treated to burning coffee to drive the bugs away. Whether the staff were ignorant or just didn't like us I don't know, but we were the only table to not receive burning coffee, and as such the whole restaurants wasps decided to congregate around our food. Every time an employee saw us we were swatting wasps away, and yet they did nothing. Not even direct eye contact would get their attention - I stared at one worker as they walked from one side of the restaurant to other whilst simultaneously fighting off wasps for my food, yet they took no notice. We asked for the bill as soon as possible and left as quick as we could to avoid wasps damage. Overall, the food was decent if but a bit overpriced (the mentioned dip and subpar bread worth no more than a few euros and bottled water being 3.50!). This could be overlooked. What could not was the poor service, seeing guests struggling to eat amongst terrorising wasp attacks and doing nothing about it other than offering some 'on the house sweet treats' in the form of some fairly dry watermelon slides (1 each). Sad to say will not be going back, as the place had a good atmosphere, was busy, and had good food...