Alana Restaurant — Restaurant in Municipality of Rethymnon

We've known this place since 2016 year. It was absolutely amazing, the food was fantastic and no complaints with service. Unfortunately this year the owners decided to earn for 2020 and 2021 at once and this time Alana disappointed us greatly. First of all their food. It's unacceptable and incompetent to have the same dish cooked in several different ways. I understand, Alana has couple chefs and sous chefs but they have to know how to cut meat to get the best results and stay consistent with dishes and menu. One time we received thinly sliced pork pieces (it was fantastic and tender), the other time we received CUBED PORK and it was tasteless and dry. Another example - fantastic tender squid almost sweet of its’ freshness, the other time it was so burnt that it was bitter to taste, I had to spit it out and send it back to kitchen. Now to their service level - the downgrade is huge. Usually there were 2-3 waiters, sometimes it is not enough for whole restaurant. Sometimes they were too lazy to move quicker or at least to react when we asked them to come. I mean the restaurant was almost empty but we had to wait 30-40 minutes just to pay. When we received charcoal-burnt squid we had to ask for a waiter THREE times. And eventually we received indifferent face and shrugs. Cherry on top. We decided to spend our final dinner at Alana but we were denied at booking specific table we liked and later we were denied with booking a table at all. Well, nice customer service. Ok, we came here to have final lunch and received burn squid, 25 minutes wait to order, almost 40 minutes wait to pay. Once again the restaurant was empty. It's a huge shame for such fantastic restaurant to downgrade and rely on the amount of customer turnover. That nobody will come here so often to see their downgrade and compare… Well, probably the next time we visit Rethymno, Alana will not be on our must-visit places...

Just wow. I have to agree with the latest few reviews which are all bad and give it one star, if I could I’d give it none. One person from our table had allergies to gluten and garlic and it seems that our waiter got offended for her asking questions about her allergies (it’s not that she doesn’t like certain things, she is literally allergic to them). After this, we got our food, which was badly cooked, bland and spoilt.

I got a tuna tartar which had some tuna cubes that had gone off. The beef tartar was bland, no flavor at all. The mushroom risotto was UNCOOKED, the rice was hard to chew.

We talked to the waiter and he took our plates away and told us that he would bring new ones, but instead he brought the menu and said that we had to choose something else because “their dishes were the most ordered every night” so they were perfect and they couldn’t redo them for us. (I was shocked as my tuna had literally gone bad).

The waiter then proceeded to laugh with his colleagues and kept looking at us, laughing as if everything was amusing to him. In the end he chased us to the door and said, unapologetically and mockingly, that THANK GOD that ours was the only table with problems that night. We left annoyed but weren’t in the mood to keep up with this. THEN HE FOLLOWED US OUT IN THE STRRET AND CONTINUED TO LAUGH at us repeating the same things.

I’ve never in my life have been treated this way in a restaurant. We talked to him with RESPECT and education all the time, I don’t know why he insisted on engaging in a mocking tone, getting out of the restaurant and following us to the street when he should be working inside just to keep saying things at us.

The BAD EXPENSIVE food isn’t even the biggest problem, their really bad offensive service is.

Please don’t go there, it’s not worth anyone’s...

Great food, and filling, near the old fortress.

We visited as a family of four and would recommend booking in advance. The decor and presentation of the restaurant is beautiful. It's the fine attention to detail that really sets restaurants like this apart from others, from the lighting, to the modern bar, to the tree-roof.

The staff were very attentive and friendly.

There was lots of choice on the menu, catering for all tastes. We ordered a salad to start, and bread. There was plenty of both, which was really nice, and they had a selection of breads and various dips, including black eyed peas! I ordered lamb and pasta, which was delicious, not too fatty, and I barely managed to finish it because it was filling. I finished it nonetheless because I couldn't waste such nice food! The waiters then brought us brownies and ice cream to share for free, which was lovely, and the complimentary Raki, which is given in almost every Cretian restaurant with the bill, was given to us in a jug so we could have as much as we liked, once again setting this place apart from other restaurants.

My only improvement would be the price - the average main was around €15 which is a bit more expensive than other places with similar types of food. However, the quality of this place could arguably make...