Ilios Greek — Restaurant in Mexico City

I’ll start off my 1-star review by saying I’ve visited the Ilios locations in Tulum and Cancun and they were truly 5-star experiences without a single complaint. This location however… it is a shame they carry the Ilios name with the service that I experienced.

We had a reservation for a Friday night expecting a similar experience to their other locations. This location however is much smaller, I’m not sure that they put on any kind of show like the other locations. It was the first time I’ve walked out of a restaurant in many years before even glancing at the menu.

When we arrive, the restaurant is mostly 1/3 full which is great, we expect perfect service and a nice relaxing fun time. After being seated, we are assigned a server that not only spoke zero english, but also refused to listen to our Spanish. It was as if he was offended by the English language, he did not even know the word “water”, even after requesting both “water” and “Agua naturale”, our server seemed confused and kept trying to upsell us on sparkling water, which nobody in my party enjoys or asked for. At this time we’re very confused, at the other Ilios locations there was water waiting for us as we were seated. The server then calls by another person whom also speaks no English and refuses to listen to our Spanish (my Spanish fluency is around 50%, ordering food has never been an issue), the second server and our original server are still trying to sell us sparkling water and they begin arguing with us on how it tastes better than the other bottled water. We begin to lose our patience, but finally the server puts in our order and we wait…

6 minutes later and we are finally brought a bottle of non-sparkling water. At this point we still did not have drink menus nor food menus. We sit patiently, looking for a QR code to see the menu or any server that is willing to help us. Finally, 15 minutes after sitting down, our server returns with an iPad, does not say anything and just shows us we can swipe through the menu on the single iPad and look at pictures of the food. We politely ask for regular menus as sharing an iPad after waiting 15 minutes seemed crazy and tedious. The server takes the iPad and leaves the table… 5 minutes later we are brought a single food menu. We are now 20 minutes into our reservation and we have not seen a cocktail or drink menu, and were brought a single menu to share. On top of this, the entire situation was uncomfortable and awkward. This is a fine dining establishment with high prices, they should know that as soon as a guest sits they should offer water and provide drink menus immediately. The drink menus should have already been on the table, we had a reservation and were not a walk-in!

It was at this time we got up and left. We felt that the restaurant was disrespectful to our time and completely unprofessional that night. It was quite obvious our table needed help as my party was constantly looking for a server or manager to assist.

To the management team, provide your guests the drink menu immediately upon sitting down. In fact, there should be a drink menu at each table prior to sitting. Do not try and upsell your guests on water… a very slim number of people will request sparkling water over natural water. Likewise the food menus should be available upon sitting, waiting 20 minutes to see your menu is insanity. You should not hire servers that are rude and offended by the English language; whilst also mocking customers communicating in your language. As soon as we asked for “Agua naturale” there should have been no questions, we wanted regular water and not sparking. Calling another server over when we repeated ourselves in English was extremely unprofessional as well. I don’t expect your servers to be fluent in English, however I do expect them to know the word “water” and assume that guests of your restaurant would most likely enjoy a glass after a hot day.

My review is solely based on the terrible service as we did not even have the chance to try the food or drinks at...

Think about this: an authentic traditional Greek Restaurant owned and operated by Grupo Anderson's (yes, Senor Frog's, Carlos n Charlie's, Tecama Charlie's, etc). This is as much a Greek Restaurant as Chili's is an authentic Mexican restaurant. The service was below standards, the drinks are ridiculously expensive! You order a $400 peso ($20 bucks) scotch and they measure it in a 2 oz short tequila shot. This is all you get. When I asked the manager for the reason if such a meager quantity for such an expensive drink, he simply said: these are the house rules and we make no exceptions! The food was terrible: hummus that was harsh and fibrous (rot really a dip) with tons of Cumin (hummus does not have cumin), it tasted more like an Indian salad; the tabouleh was nothing like a tabouleh, it tasted like a bland quinoa salad. The grilled fish was hard, very smelly and absolutely tasteless (except for the strong fishiness). There are soooo many options in Polanco, My advice, avoid this "Greek" restaurant and choose a place where you're going to get much better quality for such an...

Absolutely everything about our dinner here was outstanding. To start, i’m learning spanish and the staff were above and beyond patient with me and also very accommodating of english. The restaurant is beautiful. We made a reservation for sunday night but that wasn’t necessary. We were one of the only tables there so it was quite enjoyable. Had a table looking out to the open windows and lovely Polanco streets.

I got the salmon. it was cooked to perfection. We also got a bottle of red wine and dessert. Everything was delicious.

We’ve dined a lot in Polanco and have found at many places for the service to be too much. A lot of upselling and hovering. This was not the case whatsoever at Ilios. We left saying it was our favorite dining experience in Polanco we’ve had yet. Everything was perfect, the staff incredible and kind, and a good menu.

We will be back before leaving...