Horiatiko Tavern — Restaurant in Municipality of Chania

Their warm friendship honors their extraordinary cuisine! We are people jumping to another Greek island, year by year. This has always been our tourist behavior. Our trip in Crete was in this September. But we found great reasons to come back in Crete in the near future. Beaches like Balos, Elafonissi, Vai, Tertsa and other 20 we succeeded to visit... extraordinary roads and views we had moving from North to South and vice versa every day... extraordinary experiences we had passing through Topolia Gorge... were just several miracles from many more amazing us in Crete. But on top of them I want to add Horiatiko, as an extraordinary combination of Cretan cuisine, great people like Stelios and his uncle Dimitris and their staff... and their friendly feelings, as well! I will not detail about the food and the restaurant... they're extraordinary, for sure! Just go there only once and you will want to come back soon. All I will say is in a nutshell: no matter how much we wandered Crete in all directions, we preferred to have dinner several times here with the thought of returning to friends. I am pretty sure even we will come back there after years, we will meet again Stelios and Dimitris as if we haven't seen each other since yesterday! Stelios, hope my Romanian palinka impressed you and hope a next time will come soon. I'll come back with the full recipe I told...

this is a very popular restaurant with both international and local cuisine. I have some mixed impressions on the food. as an appetizer we ordered dolmas and we were pleasantly surprised that they added also zucchini blossoms stuffed with rice, which my daughter loved. my main, unfortunately, was not what I expected/wished to eat. I ordered a moussaka and I was expecting the usual layered eggplant with meat, potatoes and that sort of fluffy bechamel sauce Greeks use with it. instead I was served a steamy hot (like lava hot) terrine that seemed to never cool down enough to be eaten, and when I could finally taste it (when the others already finished their meals) I was surprised by a gooey mess of melted cheese and spices with very little else in it than traces of liquified eggplant and potatoes, and I could not find the bechamel layer as all was overpowered by the lava explosion of the mozzarella-type melted cheese that I would have expected on a pizza but not in a traditional Greek dish. I really could not eat that and ended up stuffing myself with the free dessert they offered, the comfort orange syrup cake with ice-cream that almost never fails. I hope after this review they will reconsider their...

If i could I would give 10 stars. Never have I ever been in such amazing place before. Atmosphere under olive trees especially at evening with lights is wonderful. Food is fresh and local with big portions. Quality of ingredients is unmatched, even after eating full plate of gyros I didn't feel heavy or bad. After main course when you ask for receipt you get deser with bottle of lokal raki on the house. Some may say that service is a bit slow but that just greek culture they give you space and time and don't jump around you asking every 15min is everything ok. After asking for receipt you have to wait ~15min for them to prepare you desert so have that in mind and after getting it you are free to stay as long as you like. Owner is jolly fellow that welcome everyone and chat with customers. Everyone here is friendly and know perfect English so no need to worry about communication problems. We been in few places during our trip around the island but none could compete with Horiatiko. In the end we (except one day) always ended up here and we never were disappointed. Best restaurant...