Ήδυσμα & Άρτυμα seafood restaurant — Restaurant in Municipality of Monemvasia

This is one of two, higher-end restos along New Town Monemvasia’s waterfront. They specialize in seafood, and take particular prode in their wine list featuring locally produced Greek wines (*Note: Hayema & Aptyma were the only restaurant we encountered that didn’t have wine available by either the half litre or by the glass).

We ordered two appetizers: smoked eggplant & seasonal grasses (essentially local greens like kale). The smoked eggplant was delicious - a lovely blend of spices and rich, smoky eggplant flavour (the eggplant we had everywhere was killer). The seaonal grasses were simply steamed and presented for you to dress up with olive oil, fresh lemon juice and salt & pepper to taste.

For our mains we ordered: roasted sardines & grilled octopus with . The roasted sardines were cooked and sauces to perfection - just fabulous. The octopus was perfectly grilled, and the was something of a revelation. It’s hard to capture the consistency. The best we can come up with is a light, silky aoili. However you describe this it was absolutely delicious!

For our wine we chose a white from Monemvasia Winery. At 26€ it was the most we had spent on wine since we left Canada on March 18, so we’ll confess to wincing a little. That feeling passed the instant we tasted the wine - it was superb! So good, in fact, that it prompted us to arrange a wine tasting at Monemvasia Winery later that week - which we enjoyed immensely (and now, back to the regularly scheduled review!).

For dessert we shared a decadently rich chocolate brownie with cookies and cream ice cream - ‘cause sometimes you just gotta give in to your inner eight year old!

All in the meal came to 80€. A bit pricey, but worth a treat visit as...

It was quite a disappointing experience. Despite the delicious food, greetings to the chef by the way, they can spoil your evening with the slowest service you can imagine. Only to receive the menu we waited 30 minutes and the excuse was that the restaurant is full of clients. For me personally it's ridiculous and they embarrassed only themselves. The environment is typical Greek taverna - directly on the walking way just on the coastline, inconvenient chairs, clean enough but nothing special. Menu also nothing special greek village cuisine, good size of portions but elementary. But the attitude of the young boy waiter was really amazing like we don't exist like clients in this restaurant. I had an impression that if you speak Greek or perfect English you will be served much better. Therefore I don't recommend anyone who doesn't, to visit this tavern. Just save yourself the inconvenience of feeling like your second category nation. Definitely different treatment! And the restaurant rating is completely undeserved in my opinion. 4.7 is ridiculous, nothing in the menu is different than any tavern in Greece, no special recipe or meal. I am wondering if the people who gave this high rating have ever been in Italy, Spain,...

I am really surprised with all the positive reviews mostly made by greeks. They must have forgotten what high quality food tastes like. The menu is very limited, literally 10 items and I would expect that these are at least well made. Salad was the restaurant special and it is below average. Potatoes were not properly cooked, the tirokafteri is so spicy that we did not touch it (also tasteless). The fish is not fresh as I would expect from a restaurant next to the sea, when we asked why we were told that they had bought the fish during lockdown but they did not manage to sell it so that they have to do this now !!! The fresh fish portion is tiny and served and really poor vegetable. At the end they did not want to give a VAT receipt in order to avoid paying the tax, when we asked for it they did not bring the receipt for 20 mins, then they did not want to bring the POS. It took us 45 mins to pay and we could clearly see that they were commenting on us while we were waiting.

Overall, avoid this place, unethical practises with poor service. I can't see why anyone would...