Broccolino Restaurant — Restaurant in Municipality of Rhodes

Tldr; honestly this is not a nice place to eat. The staff are rude, the atmosphere is dead and the food is even worse. I don’t give one star reviews lightly, but unfortunately my experience at Broccolino is one I’d rather forget. Given its particularly high price for the area, I’d urge you to save your pennies and dine elsewhere if you can. I reserved a table at Broccolino a few days ahead of time, after being recommended it. The menu looked like fairly simple Italian food - high prices but I assumed worth it. I’d also walked past the place and the atmosphere and outdoor setting looked good. Upon arrival, things got off to a shaky start. We were greeted after a few minutes and asked to wait for our table to be made up. We saw the table that was being made up was one in the doorway - an area with little space, no view and lots of people walking by. I asked if it was possible to have another table, perhaps one outside. The front of house team wasn’t able to accommodate this - they suggested we could wait for one to come available or sit there. Generally a table of this nature I’d view as an overflow or walk-in table but it wasn’t the end of the world; we sat down to eat. During the meal, we had wrong items delivered, the male waiter we were dealing with made rude remarks multiple times. Truly the main offence though was the food - all could have been forgiven if this was good. We both ordered the truffle gnocchi and a green salad to share. The salad was too salty to eat, and the gnocchi over cooked to the point I couldn’t finish it. The cheese sauce was simple and plain but the dish on the whole was not well balanced and was unpleasant. Definitely a restaurant you can remove from your list, and you’re better off supporting some of the places with decent food and...

So! This is a bit of a rollercoaster. This place comes highly recommended from research but it's very illusive - website is cool but cryptic - and opening hours are very particular. Booking in advance? No idea how to do that. So we made our way over around 8.30pm and they were very busy, no worries, hovered patiently ... awkwardly... with no greeting to the point of being blatently ignored. Got the attention of someone (floor manager?) who said come back in an hour maybe they'll have something after being annoyed that we didn't have a booking. No worries, got a drink elsewhere and came back. Waited patiently... Awkwardly... Until a couple pushed in front and asked if a table was free - they were about to get walked straight in until we went 'hello, we came earlier!'. Finally got a table, food was beautiful and wine was divine (though as others reviews have noted - all imported and not locally sourced) and the place was very beautiful. Staff continued to be rushed off their feet, the floor manager (?) in particular was being very tactful in his attention vs. multi tasking (and therefore couldn't be taken as genuine as his eyes were multitasking elsewhere during chit chat) and even to get the bill and pay we had to be quite forceful. We saw other couples come in awkwardly treading the steps we'd taken - maybe it's a right of passage to stave off tourists. Would we go again? Absolutely - for the food and a balmy evening in a nice location. Was it the most awkward night out ever? I mean, ever? Yup! I wish you good luck going...

We ate here a couple of years ago and it was good, so we returned. That was a mistake. The food is decent Italian of the type that you would get in any large UK town, and last night was no different - very good bruschetta (which is maybe sold as a sharing plate as it is massive), good verde pasta with lamb ragu and passable seafood pasta, inadequately seasoned(and they were not particularly pleased when we did ask for seasoning, which is not provided at table). The reason that we would never go back was the appalling service - from the moment that we arrived well in time for our reservation (and were treated as an inconvenient irritation) to the moment when we asked for our bill and the waiter said yes and then continued with his paperwork (tomorrow’s reservations) right next to the table for so long that we just eventually asked another waiter for the bill. The bill was accompanied by a chocolate mousse on the house, but I’m afraid the horse had bolted well and truly by that point, so we declined, paid and left. Not a good dining experience at all - there is a strong whiff of entitlement about the place. Hopefully they can rectify this, as the food is OK. We did not appear to be alone in our views, so maybe it was just a bad night, in which case a quick word at the beginning would have...