Ithaka_restaurant — Restaurant in Municipality of Ios

Not worth the 18€ a plate and a 80€ meal to be yelled at and eat bland food next to stray cats. Restaurant had my original review taken down as being “fake” when indeed it was my experience there. Further provides their true character.

EDIT from response: The cat which you are refering to in your review and were attacking it by hitting it with your napkin is adopted by the business, as we support and look after for the general but also medical care of homeless animals. I shoo'd it away with my napkin. I did not "attack" it. If you want to claim to be responsible for the health of the cat(s), then I would like to point out you are starving it. You can see the cat's spine and hip bones. It is severely malnourished.

This specific cat was abused in the past and it was with great difficulty that we managed to persuade her that she is safe at our place which is now her home. I kindly asked you not to hit her and took her away our of respect of your friend's medical condition. Even though I came back multiple times, you never requested to be moved indoors where there would be no interaction with any animal, homeless or not. -That is false. The waiter took the cat indoors. Again, if you want to claim responsibility for the cat you might want to look up the word abuse becuase you are starving it.

As far as the food is concerned, we are sorry to hear you have not enjoyed it despite you finished all four dishes you were served. At Ιθάkα, we are always willing to replace a dish that does not satisfy our customer's taste buds. -The incident happened after we were done our appetizers (which I had the octopus and it was delicious) and we had already ordered dinner. I did not finish my plate. (I had 2 plates total, one for appetizer and one for my meal) I left the fish on my main course then promptly asked for the check.

Kudos on having someone leave you a good review bashing our experience as well as just copying and pasting your response. Really...

I have a theory you can figure out the quality of a restaurant by the bread they bring out first. By this standard Ithaka is already one of the best I've been to anywhere, having started with two kinds of delicious bread and an amazing smoked aubergine dip.

Every single thing that followed was equally good. The cocktails were unique, tasty and very well priced (perhaps too much so), the Greek salad was the best I've had, with subtle flavours which stood out by use of high quality olive oil mixed with herbs. I had the seafood orzo pasta which was perfectly cooked with delicate flavours set off with a touch of lemon zest.

This was continued with the wine, which I've found sometimes in Greece there isn't much difference between a 30€ and 5€ bottle, this was an exception, it was excellent.

In all considering we had cocktails, starters, mains, dessert, wine and an aperitif, it came to about 40€ a person, it easily deserved double.

In summary, attention has been paid everything at Ithaka, from the food and drink, down to the tables and cutlery, topped off by the staff who were all lovely and incredibly helpful. It's set a new standard for me and restaurants in Greece, to the point I have to go back and change...

Horrible experience. Killed my vibe on Ios for sure. I’ve never written a bad review but I was so astonished at what happened that I wanted to share my experience.

Food was plated gorgeous as you’ve seen in pictures I’m sure. The cook on the food was well executed, but the flavor profile was not sophisticated enough to blow me away or anything extraordinary as the other reviewers suggested.

The issue was when there was a cat standing within a foot next to me during the whole meal. I have a severe allergy from cats, where my throat closes up. I told the server that I had an allergy and if he could just move the cat away from the table. The cat came back and we tried to shoo it away, but was responded by the waitress yelling at us saying “don’t treat him like that he’s not touching you” when in fact he did touch my friends leg, and furthermore, the cat does not need to touch me for its dander to end up in my food and my throat to close. If it’s between your customers dying and telling the cat to move then... warning to all future customers is all I have to say. RIP.

Worst service of my life, ruined my night, flavors not to die for. Do...