Lavanda e Rosmarino Trattoria Italiana — Restaurant in Municipality of Naxos and the Lesser Cyclades

Following on from the owner's comments to my review (below). She did flag my review to Tripadvisor, which in turn has not found anything odd with my review and left it posted. Dear silviar (owner), rest assured, my review is genuine, and the attitude in your response to myself and other unsatisfied customers, consistent with what I describe in my review, confirm so. It goes without saying that my review reflects my own personal experience (whatever my race or DNA) and as such is not right or wrong (especially to the extent to which you would want it to be removed). In the same spirit, you should not report a review, or mark it as suspicious, just because you disagree with it or don't like it. Things can improve and sometimes are wrong. Arrogance or censorship is certainly not the way to improve.

Had dinner during my stay at Koufonisia with my wife and a couple of friends in summer 2021. Pizzas were of the like of Pizza Cameo, or the worse of the frozen products you normally buy in Tesco or Sainsbury. The rest of the dinner was mediocre at the very best. When approached the staff as one the pizzas was not cooked and the tomato acidic their response was paternalistic, arrogant and rather pretentious (similarly to their response to online reviews). I did not argue to avoid unpleasantness with the other people at my table, all shocked for the food and the attitude of the staff. It would be a disgrace to call this italian food (which I know a little something about, being of italian origine). Better eat in one of the local restaurants, all of which are a safer option for the food and for the service...

Best restaurant in Koufonisia

Note that this is a higher quality restaurant (compared to the cuisine you get otherwise on the Smaller Cyclades). If I look at the few complaints in the review sections, then I see most people complain about prices. Yes, the portions are not huge, but you just need to allocate a certain budget to having dinner - if you go to a Greek Taverna, you'll also end up spending quite an amount of money - and you certainly will get neither a Pasta nor a Pizza even CLOSE to what you get here. So you'll end up spending maybe 20 EUR more on a dinner for 2 ppl overall for the same amonut of food (if you don't eat pizza, which is extraordinary good value). Of course, you're always spending less if you cook pasta at home (if you have a kitchen), but that's not the point of a restaurant.

We went several times last year and this year and we can recommend the following OUTSTANDING dishes: Pizza Buffalina (it's 16 EUR and worth every cent) Pizza Marinara (it's 10 EUR for a world class pizza you will get nowhere on the Islands) Salads were also pretty good Pasta Carbonara (my girlfriend has been talking about this for weeks) [We'll try other dished from the menu next year]

Also note that the Pizza SEEMS small at first but then you discover that it has quite a base and a crust, and you even end up struggling to finish it if you had a primo piatto.

We love greek food but after 2 weeks of Greek Salad, Fish and Tzatziki, we were quite happy about the quality of the food.

Needless to say, the people aber super nice, as has been pointed out by many others in the...

I am usually not that harsh, but given the extravagant amount of money we had to pay:

-service was quite poor. There was no attention on the timing, dishes of the same course arrived at a different time in another table. Table next to us received a shrimp dish without the shrimps, which was retrieved after 5 minutes of offering. Main course (only three dishes of medium difficulty and preparation demand) took almost 1 hour to prepare. Spoon was not delivered with the pasta. Knife was not provided for the main course. The fish we ordered was not prepared, nor asked whether it is to be prepared by the kitchen. -food was made in a hurry. We ordered the prosciutto salad. The tomato was cut poorly in the salad (the branch point was left in the salad) , the prosciutto as well, one fork bite and the whole prosciutto was out of the plate. We ordered the marinated salmon. Half of the salmon was smoked, half was marinated, my experience in shushi restaurants suggested exactly that (against the sayings of the lady who served us). The quantities were poor. I add with my review a dish that costed 16 euros...Kalamari (16 euros) in the menu was stiffer than one would expect, sea bream (19 euros) was drier than expected (not even coming with the expected sider, mashed potatoes, but diced potatoes instead, which were overcooked)

My definite suggestion, as a Greek local, is to avoid it, there are a lot of better options...