Ταβέρνα Βασίλης, Λογγός Παξοί — Restaurant in Municipality of Paxos

This place ruined our last evening on the island... Food was quite good indeed, but not at all the best we had on Paxos/Antipaxos/Corfu. Doesn’t deserve the higher prices than most other places. The presentation and attitude of the restaurant and staff however is very pretentious and arrogant, and wannabe posh but without class... But the service ...if I could give negative amount of stars I would. 1 waiter (a guy with longer hair attached in a bun) was good and efficient. The rest...they messed up our order, made us ask few times for simple things like a bucket to keep the wine cool, made us wait ages for the bill and especially to collect it and bring the change etc etc. The girl especially (I think her name is Christina) was below everything!! But the WORST...we asked them when ordering the bill to call a taxi for us. When they came to collect the bill from us (I think around 30mn after we originally asked for it), they hadn’t ordered the taxi!!!!! We asked again, and had to wait 20mn for it after our dinner was finished...the point of asking for it when ordering the bill was to obviously not wait much...but it gets “better”: the taxi came, started, and it turned out they ordered it to the wrong destination!!!! As there are only 5 taxis on the island and they’re super busy and on a very tight schedule, the driver could only take us half way, to Gaios (we needed to get back to Mongonissi), where we had to wait another HALF HOUR for a next driver! Conclusion: we lost more than an hour of our lives because of this pretentious restaurant and its awful service, got back to our hotel passed 23.00 when we wanted to be back at 22.00 (and ordered the bill at 21.30....!!!) because of having to do our luggage and wake up at 6.00 the next morning for our ferry back to Corfu...now we’re exhausted, at the end of our holiday! THANKS A LOT, taverna Vassilis!...

We were in Paxos island for a long weekend in June just the two of us. We had heard about Vassilis so we made a reservation for our first night there. Book your table for the whole summer season. Many people without reservations were turned away because there were no available tables during the night. We arrived early around 8pm to watch the sunset with a glass of prosecco, as we did. The tables were already set in a manner that doesn't look like your regular greek taverna. It is not a taverna as we realised when we were handed the menus. Mainly fish (there were three or four meat options) and seafood. The wine list was extremely impressive with only bottles wines from Greece and abroad. There was no wine by the glass, keep that in mind. The owner, Kostas, helped us with our orders. A very polite and passionate man about his food and business. We chose the sea bream carpaccio, the bonito ceviche, the tempura vineleaves filled with seafood, grilled octopus on a celeriac puree with wild greens and we shared (one main) a beautifully aromatic lemony cuttlefish risotto. We finished our glorious dinner with an olive cheesecake with rosemary. Our choice of wine was a bottle of assyrtiko 2015 from Santorini, named Pure by VSV winery. Service was good all in all. The food was excellent. There was nothing to fault. To sum up let me tell you that we made a reservation for next day as well! And everything was just as good! Quick summary of our order: seabass ceviche with sea urchin and caviar, a greek salad with fried feta cheese, seafood linguini and fresh black (cuttlefish ink) pasta with pesto and calamari. The prices are not those of a small island taverna but they totally depict the fine quality of the chosen produce for each dish. And the portions are good! I'm just thinking about next summer and the first opportunity we get to visit...

This was the 4th-5th time overall dining here, the 2nd in 2020. What used to be the greatest dining experience in Paxos, this year so far has been an embarrassing mediocre experience. Most of the service staff has changed from the previous year, which is problematic and obvious. Unfortunately the chefs/cooks are probably different, too.

On my first visit last week, my friend ordered a Fungi Linguini... he got a Sea Food Linguini instead - out of politeness he refused to make an issue and silently, eventually, had the Sea Food Linguini. This second time, we ordered as a starter the Octopus... which was so hard to chew, you could swear it was rubber in disguise (you DONT serve this to a customer)! As mains, we ordered 2 Sea Food Linguini and 1 Black Ink Rissotto (which was excellent). The Linguini pasta were probably the WORST overcooked Linguini I ever had (didn't eat them and were deducted later from the bill). In "usual" restaurants I tend to order the pasta "al dente" - I'd never expected this should have been the case also for a restaurant of this calibre (and price tag). A total DISASTER! My friend, after a long day in the sea and starving, ate the pasta "in pain" because we also couldn't wait for new servings. We also found the recipe a bit dull, but that is subjective. OVERBOILED X2 pasta in such a restaurant (24 Euros the plate), is objectively a shame for the cook.

I also got the impression this year that the menu variety has been substantially (and uninspiringly) reduced - maybe it has to do something with the COVID downsizing/restrictions. Maybe.

So, in 2020 in 2 out of 2 trials, disappointing outcome. If this place wants to keep up to its established reputation, something needs to change. However, I will give "Vassilis" a third, and hopefully not the...