Votsalo — Restaurant in Sami Municipality

Beautiful setting with a disappointing kitchen.

Restaurant is part of an upscale (for the island) little resort. Beautifully set on the rocks overlooking the sounds to Ithaca. Save the last 5 minutes and final "dip" there is also a sunset view from the deck.

Kitchen aspires to be "fine dining" but does not live up to that aspiration. Despite adding appx 80% to the std prices of decent restaurants in the area, this was about the lowest level we experienced on our trip. Kitchen is probably med-italian with a few departures into "fusion". It seems the real aspiration was a higher end hotel-resto fare from anywhere. No local sourcing and for that reason no sense of freshness, purpose or idea.

Few dishes stood out positively, shrimp risotto was tasty and cooked just right, arancini with a chili mayo were on par and a chocolate desert disappeared so quickly from our daughters plate I am not sure what it was.

Tempura prawns were more like prawns in a wet towel, no puffy crunch at all, and served in a weird mix of tomato-chili salsa and eggplant.. even if done right those things didnt belong together. Scallops in a passion fruit sauce were overcooked, or had maybe been frozen for too long?.. as an idea maybe could have worked if the scallops had been done just right and sauce added on the side with a slight bit of the zing from the passion fruit preserved.. Fish choices were salmon(?) and tuna. The farmed salmon was a long way from Norway.

place itself is beautiful, come for a drink on the deck but until the kitchen finds a purpose,...

Amazing view in a high end resort. Genuinely incredible. That’s the 2 stars.

Service is slowwwwwwwww. We were the only people there and took 20 mins to ask for our drinks order, and a further 20 mins to deliver them.

Food was pretty average overall. Starters were ok, frijoles were fairly flavourless, pork was nice but lacked seasoning. One starter was completely forgotten (patatas bravas)

Mains came out at different times. My mums main came 10 mins after the first round - completely unacceptable in a self labelled “fine dining” restaurant.

My medium rare steak was over cooked, so was sent back. Chef wasn’t amused by this and came over to tell me it was perfect and at 41C and then shouted “I’m a chef” when I reaffirmed that it wasn’t medium rare. They then sent me a blue-rare steak 10 mins later that was completely lacking in any seasoning at all. For 52 euros, it was extremely disappointing.

Icing on the cake was when they asked for a tip at the end, when the whole meal should have been free.

235 euros poorly spent overall.

By the looks of the reviews (which annoyingly I didn’t check before), this seems fairly on par for this restaurant that looks like it...

One star for the amazing view and another for the drinks. The third is for the food which was edible, albeit seemed to have been put trough the blandifier. We ordered the sea bream and seafood risotto, both of which had very 'delicate' flavours, if I was being kind. Sadly, the prawns and calamari in the risotto were over done and tough - unforgivable in this part of the world! Maybe we got the trainee chef but can't recommend the nouvelle cuisine...