Zéfyr Café Restaurant — Restaurant in Velas

This place reminded me of Gordon Ramsay’s kitchen nightmares except that the nightmare never ends. Visited this place with friends after seeing a high rating on google however I felt like I had just been cheated on after eating here in terms of food quality and pricing which is priced like a restaurant in Paris. The food looked like vomit on a plate (see pic) and dare I say - it tasted like it too. As we sat down we were told that this was a slow cook food restaurant very early on, where everything is organic and fresh and the chef likes to take his time to cook as he is a perfectionist. We were constantly told that the food is brilliant and fresh and that the fish was caught previous evening and were asked if we could taste the particular ingredients whilst we were having our dinner. Unfortunately the food was bland, the fish tasted rancid which means it was more than a week old. I asked for a fizzy drink and was told they dont serve those kind of drinks but serve only fresh and organic stuff and they have juices, to which I responded asking if they are squeezed in the restaurant? They let me know that the juice is fresh “temperature wise” but the juice was a packaged one from concentrate. The dessert was awful, ordered a chocolate crepe and the chocolate tasted disgusting and cheap. Again the mediocre dessert took an hour to come as we were reminded “the chef was a perfectionist”. To summarise the truths about this place once you overcome the constant gaslighting by the owner:

1. the chef is inexperienced who cant parallelise food preparation for only 3 occupied tables (only 8 people for the entire evening) at the restaurant for the evening we visited hence the place is a “slow cook restaurant”.
2. they emphasise on the freshness of food constantly however this is far from the truth- you pay a premium for bland rancid food. Other restaurants on this island sell real organic food for a very reasonable amount (1/2 to 1/3 price approx to Zefyr) as I saw a nearby restaurant owner, whom I visited the previous day, pick vegetables from his farm along with his kids the next day randomly on our way as this is a very small island. He never claimed his food was organic but just delivered good food to us without gaslighting or excess marketing. Let the food do the talking for itself.
3. the owner needs to work on addressing customer grievances and get their act together instead of bashing customers and continuing gaslighting the customers who pointed out the problems of this restaurant in google reviews.
4. the overly friendly rapport the staff of this restaurant make with customers almost made me write a positive review too which explains the other...

So! Since I got a response without writing a longer review, I am editing to write it properly.

As you can see, anyone that wrote a lower review (from 1 to even 4 stars) got completely gaslighted and told to be some idiots that somehow didn't get it at all.

Let's start with the good: the waitress was very friendly and helpful, the chef lovely and offered some liquor in the end and apologized for making a mistake with cream (it happens, not a big deal). The view on the Pico is spectacular at sunset too!

Now. The food was really average for the 3 of us, good but really not worth VERY high prices, which is why probably there's never any local (I didn't try the crepes but never saw a crepes in my life for 23 euros anywhere). The basic green veggie small salad was 9 euros, main dishes around 25 euros. Yes, as the owner answered, they forgot I had said no to cream/milk in my food and yes they rectified it by pushing the cream away from my fish. They said making another fish would take too much time and they took the decision for me. I was told it's ok to eat a bit of cream sometimes. In my case I feel it's ok but for someone that has strong allergies this was absolutely out of line.

What was very disturbing is the owner herself. As you can see on every not-stellar review below, she is very insistent and despite, I really see trying to be friendly, is just pushy and not listening at all to customers. (Feel free to read other comments below, you will understand right away.) I was told about my food allergies that it didn't matter, that it happens to make mistakes (I had told the waitress exactly this, not sure why I was the told the same) and was really this imposing figure telling us what we should think. I do understand customers reviews can be scary for restaurant owners, but I did try to remain very friendly and did tell them it was ok to make a mistake and ate my food with cream despite not being able to, because it is true that mistakes happen and the waitress was lovely. So if the customer is friendly, don't tell them their allergies don't matter.

Again, the review for 1 star was more that's it's really expensive and none of of us thought it was worth it, and the very gaslighting owner behaviour.

Hope it...

We came here with great excitement due to the positive reviews we read on Google Maps, however we were left really disappointed which makes me wonder about the authenticity of the reviews.

Location: nice view of Pico, options to sit inside and outside not far from the trees. Outside of the towns which is nice.

Food: The food was very much lacking flavour and I’m so sure the owner / manager will reply to this telling me it is full of flavour and spices (based on their responses to other reviews). But the reality is: there’s no spices or flavour at all. After our visit, I have found a couple of bad reviews but the restaurant responded with gaslighting those reviewers and making customers believe they are eating something better than they actually are.

Prices: This restaurant is expensive compared to other restaurants on the island (€20-26 for a main). It would have been okay if the food was worth that price.

Service: the owner was friendly. However the service is slow and they will tell you it’s a slow cook restaurant and the chef is a perfectionist, but it’s actually just an excuse for being extremely slow cause the food really isn’t good. We waited 45-50 min for our dessert and the dessert was far from perfect.

Edit: The intention of my review is not to cause harm but simply share my genuine experience eating at...