Marathos Gastro Tavern — Restaurant in Municipality of Sithonia

The menu is very basic and there are no much sea food in the menu, mostly meat. The restaurant is very modest and the toilet in very bad condition. We ordered for lunch for 4 persons and the waiter asked occasionally if we want bread aside, with what we agreed. At the end of the lunch we wanted to pay and there came a new guy with a bill completely in Greek Alphabet. We didn’t mind that but I asked what is the 8€ on the bill that I didn’t remember we ordered something in that amount. Then he cold blooded said well we price bread here per slice and you guys ate 5 slices which makes it 8€. I was shocked and said but that Is very very expensive for bread but he told me it’s special bread with olives and tomatoes it’s like a cake. 😂 I had the felling he was uncomfortable. I said thank you we will know for the next time not to come here. The truth was that it’s totally a rip off, the waiter never told us that it’s charged per slice and that’s so expensive ( although there was no slice , one slice was cutted to two peaces and they were selling the one piece as a slice), it’s not a special bread it has a little bit of olives and peaces of tomato but nothing special about that really and it’s certainly not 8€ worth and it’s not like cake most definitely! 😂 We won’t go there anymore, the restaurant is overall less than average, although the backed goat cheese was very good everything in total especially the incident with the bread was disappointing.

Update my answer to the chef on the comment below:

Thank you for your response. For clarity, we were two adults, a three-year-old, and a baby — not four adults. The main issue was the bread. When the waiter asked if we wanted bread on the side, we agreed without checking the price, assuming it would be reasonable. Charging €12 for bread for two adults and two toddlers is, in my opinion, absurd — especially as we ate no more than 4–5 full slices in total. Cutting slices in half and counting them as a whole is another level of nonsense.

We came to taste your food and ordered two baked fetas, one Greek salad, octopus, and a fish fillet with asparagus and potatoes. With that amount of food, there is no way we consumed €12 worth of bread, especially as the children ate almost nothing.

I still believe there should be more seafood options on the menu for a tavern by the sea( the whole Orada I didn’t see on the menu that was given to me). I also wouldn’t agree your food is significantly different from other places nearby, but if you say so, let’s believe you. What is certain is that your bread pricing is unethical, and the way you are justifying it now makes it even worse.

Have a good...

Overall score 2.5/5

Staff and experience.

We explicitly asked for a dish to contain no dairies due to allergies and of course they brought the dish containing butter.

Aside from this, generally speaking the staff was kind and well mannered.

Food.

These are the dishes we ordered.

Rib eye with celery root puree, sauteed potatoes and ‘beef sauce’. 2/5. Meat was roughly 250 grams good quality. Celeriac puree was good but the quantity was small (roughly 1 tablespoon). Sauteed potatoes were burned black, disgusting, threw them away. ‘Beef sauce’ was basically some liquids from the resting meet.

Dipping sauce mix. 1/5. 3 types 1 tablespoon each. Worst tzatziki I’ve ever had. Watery huge amounts of garlic. The other two were not that good either.

Fennel fried pies 2/5, weird combination with some strawberry jam.

Pork osso buco 1/5. Worst I ever had. Drenched in what seemed to be some heated up canned tomato juice straight from the box.

Lamb chops 2/5. Grilled in an unclean electric grill. Bitter after taste, zero salt zero spices.

Red porgy fish 4/5. Probably the best dish we had. Nicely cooked good sides, though they served one fillet out of the whole fish (half).

Minced beef patties 4/5. Good patty, tasty good puree, solid dish.

Grilled pork fillet 2/5. Dried out to leather fiber consistency.

And they put these herb oils everywhere. Pan sauces, both in terms of quantity and quality were a scam (teaspoon of ‘wine sauce’).

Feedback to the staff: Listen when people ask you about allergens, someone can end up to the hospital because of your negligence. Drain the cucumber in a tzatziki. Use salt. Make proper pan sauces or do not mention them in the menu. Give a promotion to whoever makes the purees. Clean your grill. Do not serve burned food in the hopes that people will not notice.

Overall bad experience,...

We did not have time to experience the food as, when we approached the restaurant, around 6pm, Sunday afternoon, there were only 2 tables occupied, (in total there must be around 20 tables), eating. We requested to sit to a table for 4 (we were 4 - 2 couples) close to them, under the tent as the sun was still present, but we were told to sit to another place as, everything under the tent was reserved!!!!!! Of course, no reservations are requested to eat there, nor any "reserved" label was placed on the tables. So for me it lools like arrogance from Myconos, travelled to a small village in Chalkidiki.

Good luck!!

*We did not accept the table offer and left immediately, we will not try again there. We had our dinner later, in Nikiti.

Follow up, after the reply of the tavern: Thanks for your reply. I would respect the "reservation" if there was a sign on the table (which I did not see in any table) or even, if in your web page was mentioned that reservations - with specific table mentioning- are needed to eat in your tavern. Without all the above, mentioning to me that the tables under the tent were "reserved" sounded, at least, arrogant. By the way, having travelled all over Europe, in small and bigger cities, I do understand the word reservation and I am not known for being rude to service people and waiters that just follow orders. (For your info, no lady talked to us, just a nervous young guy ordered us to wait, in an restaurant with more than 20 empty tables and when we asked to sit in one of the 2 tables under the tent he told us that they were reserved offering us a table in the sun which we denied, and...