Athali Cretan Cuisine — Restaurant in Municipality of Heraklion

We were headed for a famous Crete restaurant when we ran acorss Athali. The team there had draped the place in Christmas joy, and the smells from inside lured us in. What a nice experience.

My wife, my son, and I decided to create our own tasting menu (meze) from the small but delectable menu at this very nice estabnlishment. We are all very positive overall, and can only give the restaurant a few low marks on account of the chill even in the internior, a bit of unenthusiastic attentiveness, and a bit of a loss for value for the money.

All that aside, the food here is wonderful. My roasted lamb was succulent and perfectly cooked - delicious. My wife and my son tried a several choices from the appetizer menu including veal liver, and sausages from Chania (West Crete). My son wanted to compare Athali's "lamb burgers" with those from our favorite chef at another eatery. To his surprise, the Ahtali version was better (I tried them too, delectable).

The fried lamb with vegetable and feta (one of my wife's starters) was also a near perfect dish. The Sfakian pie for desert was amazing, but the lava chocolate torte I ordered was common at best. All in all, this restaurant is a solid 4-star experience on an Island famous for its traditional cuisine. This says a lot.

Highly recommended. Guys, make the dining room warmer :) Also, with only water and two colas as beverages, the price was not in line with neighboring...

I cannot comprehend how this restaurant justify their prices. From what I can tell most positive reviews come from tourists who do not know any better...

Taste-wise the food was mid at best. Acceptable but, still mid. The portions were ridiculously small (smallest I have seen in all similar places in Heraclio). We actually had to go to a second restaurant afterwards in order to eat properly (and no, we are not overweight, quite the contrary).

On top of that, instead of bringing bread with the appetizers (like every Greek restaurant does) they brought ONE slice of roast (because it was obviously not today's) bread with some trimmed tomato on top. For three people that is. In addition, in the end they did not bring any sweet treats or raki (this is unheard of for a Cretan restaurant)

The service was bad. Except for the times they were bringing us a plate, the waiters were nowhere to be found. The simply did not seem to care and in order to pay we had to go and search for them.

I, however do not blame them. From all described above and having some experience with Cretan restaurants, one thing is obvious: the owners are cheapskates. So, I can only imagine how bad the employees are paid.

Avoid this place if you value your...

Server acting rude to us as soon as we arrived to the empty restaurant because we had no reservation. Pictures on google show a menu that shows if food is vegetarian or gluten free - menu we were given was typed on a piece of paper with a lot of the same items but did not list allergens anymore. Restaurant was not busy yet server was dismissive to us and would not double check and ask kitchen if the dish we wanted with the exact same name was still gluten free like listed on the previous menu photo saying “probably has flour on it” but would not go check.

We left after ordering 2 mediocre appetizers with wine portions half the size of other restaurants around this area. Snails were extremely salty and husband got a soggy vegetarian cheese phyllo pie trio with cheese nowhere to be found. We were very hungry at this point and ate it anyways but then left and found better food elsewhere. Our only bad restaurant experience after several amazing...