Apollon Garden Restaurant — Restaurant in Paros Municipality

Restaurant seems to be quite pretentious, but cannot deliver up to its expectations. Starting with the positive: nicely decorated and beautiful garden. Friendly staff.

The music playlist for the night were these terrible slowmotion type of covers of musicians who cannot play and singers that are able to turn terrific songs in terrible songs. Usually a red flag for things to come. At start the waitress asked whether I wanted water, and I asked for sparkling. Maybe I looked thirsty because I received the large bottle (4,50) and was not offered the choice between large or small which i later saw on the menu. Never a fan of this unrequested upselling as a small bottle would have been enough.

Then the food. The menu already created some confusion with a dish marked vegetarian while it contains salmon, and other seemingly vegetarian dishes were not marked as such or at least I could not understand the logic for not marking them as such. Then the dishes: sykiama came with balsamic glaze (and not aragula pesto). Ok. Then the Haloumi. Ok, but nothing surprised me (which was promised) compared to the average haloumi you can get in a well assorted organic supermarket. Then I was served the Imam. This was rather bland, especially after being served the haloumi. It had again the balsamic glaze (not described on the menu), so had similar tasting food as the starter. The tomato as described was just a tiny little tomato cut in half and it seemed a bit lost. I was a bit disappointed in this dish, had much better cooked eggplant many times before as well, but it didnt match with the rest either and having balsamic glaze a 2nd time was something I would have not picked if this was clearly described. The waitress acknowledged both my remark on the balsamic glaze (but strongly believed this was clearly outlined on the menu - hence it is not two times) and the upselling on the water bottle, but other than apologizing, she made no further attempt to set this right.

Average food, high prizes and quite some errors make it only 2...

Was really excited to come to here and experience the beautiful and tasty food as we read amazing reviews. However my partner were sadly dissatisfied with the food and the atmosphere. Was expecting a traditional Greek restaurant ( as per photos on TripAdvisor) But was presented with something too radical chic, accompanied with modern house music that one would listen to in a lounge/ pretentious club in New York or Milan. Nothing that really represented the essential Greek aesthetic. We spoke with locals who dined here in past and mentioned it was owned by an old Greek gentleman ( unfortunately is no longer the owner )

Our first dish was with dried figs ( which was actually very tasty ) but we had to separate it from the pesto, cream cheese and pickles. Now, pesto is not greek, it’s Italian... It belongs in pasta...

The moussaka was the worst I’ve ever had. The consistency should be balanced. Not to liquid not to hard, something in the middle. Unfortunately ours was a soup and had cinnamon which dominated the other flavors... cinnamon doesn’t belong in a moussaka.

Point is, without getting too deep into this. Stop doing fusion food. Stick to the basics that work. Obviously worked for the previous owner...and yes, this dinner really did...

Three stars is actually generous. We had been in Athens for a day, Santorini for two and now Paros for three days, and this was our most disappointing meal. The food seems to have been put together by someone who had been given a list of ingredients and a picture, but who had no idea of taste or texture. Even the tzatziki was bland, the imam was just an assembly of parts, and the "Pendulum" (a gimmicky dangling skewer of pork) slathered with an unpleasant mustard sauce. The zigzag of faux balsamic vinegar (in reality, just acidified caramel solution) across the imam was a give-away. It's always a sign of elevating appearance over substance.

A glass of house red was so thin, it could have been a rosé.

The staff were friendly and the location is nice, but it was spoilt by a bland soundtrack of a band covering (and murdering) good songs by, for example, Amy Winehouse and the Stones. It summed the place up, really - bland, no heart, no soul.

In answer to the owner's response about us finishing our plates: Firstly, we didn't eat everything. I left some of the pork kebab, and the strange pieces of tough bread that went with it. Secondly, my comment was that the food was bland and disappointing. I didn't say that it...