Ταβέρνα Κουρήτες — Restaurant in Municipality of Oropedion Lasithiou

(You may be almost forced to spend up to twice as much as you ordered here, read more if you want)

Food tasted okay. Any review of the food itself is pointless in the face of borderline scam practices: Tour busses will stop there and "recommend" you eat there. You don't have to, of course. The owner will run out to every bus talking about how the food is local and the best there. After ordering, the waiter asked in almost unintelligible English about something. We only userstood the words "salad" (we ordered tzatziki and assumed it was something about that) and "flowers" (there were flowers all around, so we assumed it was something about that as well). We just nodded the way that you would when you don't really understand but don't want the person to feel bad by asking them to repeat. We were forced a 7eur Greek salad and almost forced some kind of flower-shaped meal (I think?), thankfully in that time I read another review here so we did not accept that additional meal. We accepted and ate the salad as a stand-in for a tip in the face of dishonest practices. The salad was okay (and it went well with the meals, which come without sides by default!), but absolutely not worth 7 eur, especially in the face of ~4eur sides and appetizers from the menu. Keep in mind that neither the salad nor the "flower something" appear in the menu. Keep in mind that we were not informed about the prices (or that they weren't simply part of the meal we ordered) of any of these extras until it was time to pay. Once again, it was only thanks to another reviewer that we knew of this ahead of time. It appears to be a common practice with the staff of the restaurant to try forcing items not from the menu onto people. They also tried to force bread on us Another review says they charge 1eur for it. That's not significant of course, but certainly not nice to never mention. We told a waiter twice that we did not want it and it would be a waste of food to leave it at our table. Both times we were met with a quick "okay" and were promptly ignored. We didn't touch it and I don't think we got charged for it in the end, so that's a tiny plus I guess. You will not be given a receipt or asked if you want one here. We did not ask by ourselves. I'm not a lawyer or expert on Greek law by any means, but quick googling appears to show that all suppliers of service must provide a valid receipt, and it is possible to refuse to pay on the grounds of not getting one. This is not legal advice by any means and I might be wrong. Instead, the waiter will leave a piece of paper on your table under a glass, and then later in the middle of swallowing your food the owner will come up to collect money based on the order on the piece of paper. Apart from everything mentioned here, we were not charged any additional extra charges, paid the exact price and received the correct amount of change. You will notice that many of the highly positive reviews are from local guides. Keep that in mind as another...

We came to this tavern on the recommendation of our tour guide. We were promised local dishes that are made with local products with great care. However, this is the opposite of what we got.

The service was slow, as it seemed that the tavern was overloaded with the amount of guests that were present from the tours. The inside of the restaurant it very big, and they also have a terrace and an expansion into the garden. It seems like they are not capable of handling this amount of guests, as we waited quite a long time before we were served, whereas others were served almost immediately. When we finally ordered, the server tried to get us to order more (bread and salads). After we ordered, we got our food almost immediately, which raised correct suspicions.

I ordered the moussaka, and it was the worst one I have had in Greece. You would think that it is impossible to ruin a local dish, but in this tavern it is very much possible. It was both very hot and very cold in various places. On top of that, it was so greasy that the plate was just dripping. The potato layer was fine, but the minced meat was so dry that it all fell apart. The vegetables were soggy and greasy.

Worst money ever spent, and it definitely ruined our otherwise very fun tour. We also felt unwell after this meal because...

There’s a supermarket over the road go there do not get sucked Into visiting here. We was forced into this restaurant, if that’s what you call it.. by a coach tour, looks like it must be the only restaurant in the town... looks like coaches are purposely taking tourists to this place! Firstly ordered two Fanta lemon and got two cheap own branded lemon aides which luckily we could drink out of the bottles with a wipe over as the two glasses were sticky and dirty, the menu is just one sheet of crumpled paper in a poly pocket with 8 items translated into four different languages. We read the previous revives so knew to avoid the food and extra salads which are just placed on your table. The owner seems to have his roughly 8 year old daughter at home working in the restaurant too (child labour). Sad that’s she’s not at school or with friends. Def wouldn’t come back. Would of eaten in the previous village where we visited Zeus cave. (If of course the tour guide hadn’t insisted that we wasn’t eating there that we should wait until...