Taverna Stavros — Restaurant in Municipality of Rethymnon

Taverna Stavros is not the best restaurant in Rethymno. Taverna Stavros is not a good restaurant. It is however convenient and that allows it to still survive in toddy’s competitive culinary market. I will not recommend other places but suffice it to say your odds are better than a coin toss going to any other restaurant in its proximity. I found Taverna Stavros to be lacking in many ways. The most important being of course the food. We had the fried eggplants, tzatziki and cheese croquettes as an appetizer. The eggplants we found to be rather oily and also noticed they had been fried in sunflower oil. The tzatziki was good, presenting a good balance of garlic and lemon. The croquettes were dull and lacked any local flavour since I found the cheese inside to be very commercial in taste and rather familiar, as if you’d recognize the taste from a pizza topping you bought in your local supermarket. The mousaka my wife had as her main course was a lazy, boring and uninspired interpretation of the dish. Large chunks of potato, eggplant and courgette were clumsily assembled in uneven layers held together by generic cheese and much too little meat. It was truly sad and an offense to the Greek cuisine. I had the souvlaki and the staff chose for me the pork variant over the chicken since they didn’t bother to ask for my preference. The pork souvlaki was tasty and juicy. I liked it. The stale fries and bland green salad (literally just green salad cut in strips with no dressing or any other vegetables) was old and deflated.

We asked for the bill and had to wait a good chunk of time until I again had to flag one of the staff down to ask for the bill again.

We too, as all guests, received the complimentary raki and dessert (frozen yogurt with lemon biscuit or something like that) but the glasses provided were not clean. The glasses were presented one on top of the other and the bottom one had liquid in it and a long black hair in it. The lady in the staff was quick to replace the glasses blaming it on the condensation forming from the high temperature dish washer. It’s 26 deg. Celsius at 22:00 so I don’t think so. The shot glasses were clearly dirty or mistaken to be clean when in fact they were brought over to us from another table that already used them. In COVID times this is unacceptable and right now I just hope we don’t get sick.

I cannot recommend this place and I think you can do...

Ten stars

We've been in Rethymno for a week, and truly every dinner has been great. (We generally look for Greek restaurants with 4.5 stars or greater, and no matter how good, we don't let ourselves eat at the same place twice when there are so many highly rated places to choose from). Taverna Stavros' menu caught our eye as it offers more choice than most and appears slightly less expensive.

We might have to break our rule and go back tomorrow. We had bread and olives, split a Greek salad, and two entrees - shrimp in garlic sauce over rice, and chicken cutlet with pepper sauce.

Our waiter was great - did a nice job explaining the differences among a couple dishes, and was very warm and personable. His descriptions of the food were detailed so I could select with confidence.

The pacing of bread - salad - entrees was very good. We felt neither rushed nor ignored. The bread included both fresh and rusks, accompanied by olives and chopped tomatoes with herbs. The Greek salad was a nice balance of standard ingredients. We split one salad and it was quite ample - and very tasty. The entrees were both delicious. Very tender chicken in a rich peppery sauce. The shrimp were plentiful and very well cooked. At the end of the meal, we were presented with a complimentary sweet ( two "sticks" of rolled phyllo baked and served with honey. Delicious!

Ambiance was lovely - tables are outside.

They hinted that they would prefer to be paid in cash, which we did. I was momentarily put off by request, but then remembered - their prices are very competitive - the lowest we've seen. With prices so competitive it didn't feel good to cause them to incur credit card fees.

Though somewhat lower rated than some other places, this one knocked it out of the park for us. Just great! Very unpretentious, very flavorful food served with pride and warmth. This restaurant was great -...

We visited twice within a week and ordered the same food so fortunately can do a direct comparison of our two visits. Our first visit was great - seated quickly, great service and brilliant food. We ordered the meat meze for 2 which was one of the specials. I have not been to Greece for 13 years so was over the moon to taste the tzatziki here which was full of garlic and flavour. The rest of the meal also full of flavour. For our last dinner we came here again, seated quickly and ordered the same food. Sadly, nothing was as good as the first time. The Greek salad was not prepared very well, the tzatziki had no garlic, the meat had no flavour and was dry and the chips were soggy. Add to that there was one waiter who was not keeping up the same standards as the others, perhaps a bad day for him. We commented that the food seemed different on this visit. The waiter thanked us for our feedback and confirmed that the chef was the same every day so we are not sure what happened - perhaps just an off day all round at...