To Stachi slow food — Restaurant in Municipality of Chania

Call me old fashioned, but I happen to prefer my food freshly prepared and cooked.

I sat with a group of friends who ordered a variety of dishes including the stuffed mushrooms, boureki, moussaka and pastitsio. All these dishes had obviously been sat somewhere warm for some considerable length of time and consequently they were very dry and unappetising when sliced up and delivered to the table.

So, it doesn’t matter how home grown, organic and family wholesome your food is if it’s completely over cooked and dried out. Pasta, for example should be al dente, not dried and crunchy. Filo should be light and slightly crispy. Not burnt to a crisp.

When you serve up dried food that was made hours earlier, It means all the goodness in the food has been obliterated, all the taste in the food has been reduced to cardboard and all the pleasure of eating vegetarian food (readily available across the whole of Crete in practically every taverna you may wish to visit and not just here) becomes meaningless. These guys need to raise their game. They are resting on their considerable reputation. Which I fail to understand.

It’s lazy food. One of the acid tests for me when I visit a taverna is to leave wondering how they may have prepared and cooked a particular dish that I might want to replicate at home. That did not happen here. I could have made all their dishes better. Blindfolded and drunk.

I learnt nothing, I left disappointed. I won’t...

My wife and I were lucky enough to spend a week in Chania.

We stopped at To Stachi on the first night...and we are so glad we did. It was so good we returned four more times. The only night we didn't was on Sunday, as they are closed.

While we are both vegan, I have the added bonus of having to eat gluten free.

Well, let me tell you...the food is amazing. The father is the chef and the family are the fabulous support. The food is made in traditional greek style...it is just vegetarian/vegan. Lots of the ingredients come from the family's farm, located on the outskirts of Chania. The grandmother even lives above the restaurant.

I would be amiss if I didn't mention the daughter. She is such a wonderful lady. Sadly, I never got her name. Not only does she know everything about the food...she even gave us some suggestions for sights to see in the area. While there was only one regular item on the dessert menu, that was gluten free. She said..."I'll just ask my father to make a gluten free cake tomorrow"....and he did! And it was fantastic.

Both my wife and I can't say enough about this restaurant. You don't have to be vegetarian or vegan to enjoy the food here...you won't be...

We went in June during a heatwave and the experience was fantastic.

Because of the heatwave, there was almost no one out. The owner/chef came out and explained every dish of the menu, he was so sweet. He gave us some recommendations and we placed our order.

There was almost no wait for the food, and once we tasted it, we were amazed by the flavours. I'm still dreaming about the gigantes with orange sauce, and the stuffed veggies and zucchini flower. It was all so delicious, that even though we had ordered too much, we didn't leave anything on our plates. The owner also gave us a small plate with a mix of other dishes so that we could try other flavour profiles, and there wasn't a single thing we didn't enjoy.

To top it all off, as mentioned we came in the middle of a heatwave, and they brought us jar after jar of cold water, free of charge. We heard the owner telling the waiter to make sure we had water at all times. It was the sweetest gesture, and truly appreciated, as we had definitely suffered the temperatures during our walk that day.

In short, a genuinely heartwarming experience due to the food and the people. I hope to come back some day and enjoy...