Beefbar Santorini — Restaurant in Municipality of Thira

I want to write a fair review: overall a disappointing and grossly overpriced experience, for what you get.

Service, 3/5: Staff gushing all over you from the second you walk in, polite etc but it was overwhelming. This went on until half way through the meal when I politely stopped the waitress refilling my wine as I prefer to do it myself (to monitor how much I drink), whereupon we were promptly abandoned for the rest of the meal. Nobody came near us for more than 20mins after our mains were finished. My partner actually had to go over to one of the waiter’s stations to ask to pay the bill.

Meanwhile I had not yet finished my entree when they were already clearing my family’s plates (really bad form guys!)- our mains arrived 60 seconds later, so sat there on a tray for 5mins while I raced to finish entree and they could re-lay the table. What?! What a ridiculous rush in a ‘fine dining’ restaurant.

I was also told firmly that I couldn’t swap my mash for fries on my €200-odd steak—though I was glad I didn’t (see below, and mash was divine).

The maître d’ was terrific as was the shisha guy.

Food 3/5 (generous): Fantastic comp starter of Japanese milk buns but that was sadly the highlight. Bao buns no better or worse than any Sydney cbd food court (but 10x the price), tempura corn, never had such dense and chewy tempura in my life, ‘lobster tacos’ were fussy and flavourless, and the ‘Caesar salad’ we enjoyed, three delicate little romaine lettuce ‘boats’ but, as with the rest of the meal, overpriced.

To be fair my 15yo son said his cheeseburger was the ‘best ever’ so well done on that. Our daughter’s steak frites also good. Our fillet steak for 2 was blue (we ordered medium rare) so we only ate the outside which was fine as we just asked them to cook it some more and box it up for us.

The fries as a side (with feta) were truly awful, a soggy heap of frozen fries (€20-odd?!) so we barely touched them and I told the waitress why when she cleared the plates. She said she’d tell the chef (yeah right) and you can be assured they still appeared on the bill. No wine for less than €100-odd. Did not stick around for dessert tho my partner had a nice shisha pipe thing by the pool after dinner (€80!) Think we were down about €600 all up.

Atmosphere 3/5: it’s reminiscent of/vibe is going for super cool hotel/Bali beach club but really lacks personality, I think in part due to its desolate surrounds. Whole place seemed full of people like us, come out of curiosity or because of reading over hyped Google reviews. View from our table was over a football field sized pile of dirt/building rubble.

Come if you are young and/or money’d and/or an IG chicky babe and think being fawned over by a thousand staff and paying through the nose for average Asian-inspired food makes you cool. If you are Australian and know how good Asian-inspired food can be and/or wanna eat somewhere cool on Santorini with amazing views, imo you have many...

I must admit we had a beautiful evening with great friendly service and amazing food, although at this level of gastronomy not everything was as it should have been. The first one was that after our first courses we went for a smoke outside in the lounge, when i came back our second courses were already sitting on the table for i dont know how long. It would have been nice to wait a bit longer with the main courses or send them when we are already sitting on the table. Unfortunately the main courses were almost cold when we started eating. But not only were there cold, in both of our mains there was paprika which we declared at the reservation that one of us has a bad paprika allergy, and they even asked us beforehand who was allergic. Other than that everything was delicious and as said we had an amazing night. The end was what left all of it with a more than bitter aftertaste. We ordered 2 Tequila from our super friendly waiter. They came after we paid our bill so we thought everything was done for and we left. We got stopped by the waiter who told us that we still need to pay the shots. The Bill for them: 149€. It was a huge shock for us and the amount was half of what we paid for the whole dinner. Nobody told us that the shots were that expensive. There was absolutely no insight from the restaurant manager and after lots of arguing he agreed to 100€ instead of 149€. Then suddenly he wanted 120 which made us furious and then he wanted to call the police which we gladly accepted as this was getting completely ridiculous. We waited and after 5 min he came back, said „ok give me 100€ and leave“, so we did, leaving us with a very frustrating and bad experience. Tell your guests if a shot is 75€ so there are no bad surprises. We would have loved to come again and again but...

Wow I was so disappointed in this spot. I received a recommendation from a friend and also read all the incredible reviews so my expectations were high. We made a reservation for 8:30 which I thought would be a great view of the sunset. However, we weren’t seated until around 9:15 pm (45min after the reservation) and it was completely dark by then. We were sat at a horrible table near the back right next to the wait staff where they stood next to us the entire time. After that it took forever to get menus and even order. We asked to see a white wine list and a sommelier was immediately sent over to try and sell us on a $40 glass of wine. I said I was looking to try one of the $15 glasses on the menu but he wouldn’t let me do that and forced me to try a Chardonnay. Once I said it tasted good he was pouring it in to mine and my husbands glasses without even asking and telling us it was $20 a glass. My husband doesn’t even like white wine and hadn’t planned to order any. The steak was pretty good and honestly the best part of the meal. However the service was incredibly slow and left something to be desired. We waited after dinner another 15-20 minutes before receiving our checks. Overall we were there for over 2.5 hours from the beginning of our reservation. I would recommend checking out another spot in Santorini that doesn’t try to up charge...