Sunset Restaurant — Restaurant in Municipality of Hydra

One trip to the restaurant is worth it, but the service is so inconsistent that you will immediately fall out of love with this place the second time you go. With fairly expensive prices, you expect better service for a returnee! My husband and I ate here the first time and it was lovely. We ordered about 5-6 dishes. We returned the next day. I was looking forward to it so I starved myself all day to have a decent dinner. Only to be disappointed by the portion of the dish I ordered. I ordered the Tataki Tuna. Before I did, I asked how large the portion is. The waitress, who was extremely defensive at this point, sarcastically said “it’s a main course portion”. But I insisted and asked how big is the tuna (bearing in mind I had nothing all day) to which she said it was about 250grams. Perfect size, right? Dish arrives. Not only was it NOT Tataki Tuna, but the portion was so small, it wouldn’t even satisfy my cats. They basically brought me about 10 very thinly slices (maybe about 2-3mm) of sashimi tuna thrown on a massive plate with a few strings of Wakame, as though they picked it up from a left over plate. I would say she was about 150grams off! Needless to say, for the price I am about to pay, that was not acceptable, so I kindly asked the waitress for a larger portion. Again, in a very defensive tone, she peppered options at me so fast that I couldn’t keep up (she was clearly not bothered) such as adding a side, increasing the portion, or bringing another dish, etc. I asked her to get me the portion she promised of the same dish. She said ok, but then…Moments later, the manager comes. When we explained the situation, he first said “ok we give you 5 euro discount”. Except… that doesn’t solve my problem. I am still going to be hungry! He then gave me a completely different option and said that I would have to pay for half of my existing dish and they will take it away (without me eating it) and bring another “slightly” bigger portion. Never heard anything as stupid as that in my life! To make me pay half of a dish I didn’t eat , and only THEN bring me another?? We paid over 100 euros there two nights in a row (I know, it’s very stupid to pay that much for food any way) and we left hungry. I ended up buying a souvlaki afterwards for 4 euros to complete my dinner… absolutely rude waitress and a very bizarre outcome of my complaint with the manager. Didn’t even receive an apology. I couldn’t hold it in so I gave the waitress a very long feedback and only towards the end did she apologize after being extremely defensive while I was sharing my honest opinion and disappointment with her. I’d like to watch her and the manager being fed minion food and later pay a lot of money for it. Curious to see how that would make THEM feel. Complete shift in behavior from the first time we were there. NOT...

More cons than pros... Tldr beautiful views for poorly flavoured food at expensive prices and incredibly slow (maybe disinterested?) service.

It is aptly named. The sunset views are gorgeous.

We got seated in the inner area presumably because we didn't have a reservation but some of the outer tables didn't get filled. Who knows. They did have a table for us on Saturday night when the place we intended to go to originally told us they were fully booked, but not sure if they should get credit for having space.

Food was super mediocre for price. For starters, the bread was honestly like toasted whole wheat sliced bread from the grocery store at 1.25 euro per slice. Just decline it. Aubergine dip - not sure if it was flavoured at all. Greek salad - above average but nothing special Shrimp with bisque was the only good dish, and maybe a bit salty. Seafood spaghetti seemed like it was in a bland tomato sauce, also not really flavoured. The pasta itself had mediocre texture and mouth feel.

The fish. So... So... Expensive for what it was. We basically came looking for fresh fish and they had lots. It was 90 euro per kilo which was maybe only a little more than we had seen on the island ... But when it came out... Which was an hour after we ordered it... was very disappointing. They said it was grilled, but there were no grill marks... we wondered if it was steamed or something because the skin was not charred at all. Flavour was barely there... We had to add salt to get some flavour from it. It was admittedly very fresh and was very tender but not worth 85 euros (just under 1kg for our grouper) for sure. Would just not recommend getting it.

The service was kind of weird and mostly slow. All the food came out immediately except for the fish that took an hour to grill somehow. Once we declined dessert, they basically ignored us for 20 minutes and took forever to get the bill, and we had to ask twice. Most definitely declined to tip,...

The seafood dishes were pretty good, the chicken dish was more mediocre. Of course, the location with the view is quite spectacular. However, the service was very disappointing. After our main dish, we were never asked if we wanted to see the dessert menu, and we were completely forgotten. We tried to catch the staff´s attention multiple times - one time we managed, one waiter indicated he would come to us, but never did. After at least 15 minutes, we got tired of being ignored, and left the table to look up someone that was willing to actually give us the bill. Right behind us was another family who did the same thing. During our meal, we were sitting next to another family who was ordering lobster - they got a lot of attention throughout and after the meal and received their bill much faster than us (without having to beg for it). I guess that is the trick in this restaurant - order lobster and expensive wine and you will be considered important, otherwise not. We found other restaurants on the island that we prefer to return to next time.

Edit: The manager's response is that they "had issues with the card machine that day" and that is why we were ignored for a good 15- 20 minutes. Funny how they have no idea when I visited them (I wrote the review several weeks after our visit), but somehow magically know that it was on that specific day when they had card issues. Even if they would have had issues with the card machine, that doesn't explain how no-one attended to us for at least 15 minutes, noone asked if we wanted dessert or anything else to drink, noone came to explain they had issues with the card machine etc. I call this...