Ciao Cafe Bistro — Restaurant in Municipality of Kos

We came in a group of 4 at around 7:30pm. At that time it wasn’t very busy and we were one of the first to order.

Drinks were all fine, but we kept waiting for food, when more an more people joined at the tables around us. One after another, they all got their food, while we still waited, even though we ordered way before them.

An hour is a long time to wait, considering the others around us were served with food pretty fast. So at 8:30pm we kindly asked about what might possibly went wrong with our order. It seemed like the waitress made a mistake while taking our order.

We were not very pleased but things like this can happen. The problem was, that the waitress nor any other personell made any gesture or took any approach to excuse these circumstances. We were just told, that they are sorry and prioritized our order. A simple „Excuse me“ seems not very fitting in such a situation. We expected something like a drink on the house for the long wait or similar.

But again we waited. Finally we walked up to the woman who looked like the head waitress and tried to make a point about our displeasure. Funny though, she behaved like a child. She took absolutely no responsibility whatsoever or did cooperate in any way. She said things like: „What make you think, that I am the chef?“, „Talk to the waitress you ordered from, she is held responsible“, „Just leave if you are dissatisfied“.

As I stated. Mistakes can happen. But as the saying says: „Customer is king“. So for us it’s common sense to be more cooperative and take more initiative to excuse such mistakes.

This leaves us with a single star for this...

We chose this restaurant because of its picturesque setting. We wanted something light so chose the Greek salad specifically because it was different to the 60 so Greek salads we eaten in the previous 75 days of being in Greece

What appealed to us was that it also contained capers and tahini. We were happy to pay the €13 for each salad because of its unique ingredients.

When the salads arrived our initial reaction was one of surprise because the serving size was scant compared to what we’d been used to.

As we mixed the salad, we realised that it contained no capers at all. Nor was there any sign of any tahini.

We called over the wait staff and alerted them to these issues. Initially they were quite defensive but after some convincing they bought back a little bowl of capers. They also explained that the tahini was whipped in with the feta cheese. However, this was not the case as there was no hint of tahini at all in the balls of whipped feta, which was actually described as mousse. However, they was just dry, dense feta balls.

We were keen to have a conversation with the Chef to offer some constructive feedback (as the wait staff were defensive & unhelpful) but the wait staff and manager physically prevented us from approaching the Chef.

We paid the bill and left very unsatisfied.

If you choose to dine at this restaurant, do not order the...

I'm not used to writing bad reviews—in fact, this is my first official one, and it's a very negative one. We started with a pepperoni pizza, but the dough didn't resemble pizza dough, and the pepperoni didn’t taste like real pepperoni. The salad was okay. We ordered pasta amatriciana, penne with chicken, mushroom risotto, and lasagna (we were four people).

Firstly for pasta amatriciana, I don’t even think they used tomatoes in the sauce; it tasted pre-made, almost like a Tabasco-based sauce. The penne with chicken had some pasta pieces that were overcooked and others that were undercooked, I don’t know how they managed that. The chicken was boiled and then grilled, resulting in it being overcooked. The risotto was the best tasting dish, but unfortunately, the arborio rice was undercooked.

As for my main dish, the lasagna, it was the worst, and I’m not exaggerating the worst lasagna I’ve ever had in my life. It was overloaded with bechamel sauce to the point that I thought it was just bechamel. The pasta sheets weren’t cooked, and there was so little ground beef (not ragu or bolognese, just ground beef). I was truly disappointed. Maybe I had high expectations, and that was my mistake, or maybe it was just that bad. I'm sorry to say, but I don’t recommend this...