Opa Bath — Restaurant in Bath

Well what can I say, absolutely blown away by this place, it was just fantastic from beginning to end.

On the 10/4/24 I visited my daughter for the day who has recently moved to Bath, we booked an early lunch so we could have a bit of a walk around Bath after.

Upon arrival the place looked closed, before realising we had to go down some steps into essentially the basement of the building. This was quirky in itself (and may pose some issues for those that have mobility needs).

Whilst walking down we were greeted by a wall of water gently cascading down an illuminated sign reading ‘OPA’. We then entered what I can only describe as the most beautiful vaulted cellars.

The decor, lighting and paintings were really spectacular, it was as though we’d left the UK and had been transported to an authentic Greek taverna.

The restaurant is huge and would seat a number of diners, the tables being spaced comfortably apart. On this particular day there were three families in the entire building with it being a 12:30 sitting on a Wednesday.

We were greeted by our waitress, I believe her name was Despina, she was absolutely amazing from the beginning through to the end of our meal, extremely attentive without interruption and very humble about the quality of the food and service.

We had the Mykonos Medley priced at £57.50, this served the two of us and consisted of the following; Mussels; fried calamari, octopus carpaccio, fresh fish, Pita with a selection of dips - Melizanna Selata; Hummus; Roast pepper & Feta Dip, Greek salad & fries.

The menu did say chunky chips, and if I was going to point out any faults then this would be the only one, we got string fries in place of, which were nice regardless. Usual Greek tavernas are known for their hand cut chunky chips. However, this was not an issue at all for us.

The food was beautifully cooked, the sea bass and mussels in particular were some of the best we’d ever tasted, the mussels themselves were melt in the mouth and tasted like the sea, the calamari was also cooked to perfection.

I was so happy to see taramasalata as part of the meal, a lot of Greek restaurants in the UK don’t seem to have this on the menu at all!

This place is an absolute must if you like authentic Greek/Cypriot food in beautiful surroundings with a nice atmosphere.

There is an outdoor seating area too overlooking the river, unfortunately it was raining the day we went, I can imagine it is beautiful sat out there in the summer.

I can’t recommend OPA enough, we will definitely be back within the next...

Let me start by saying, I've been very fortunate to visit many, many restaurants around the world. Myself and partner, visited Opa this weekend for my birthday and it had been booked a week in advance. When we got there, immediately I felt a lack of hospitality but went in open minded. We we were then shown to a seat in the bar area and told that there were no tables available in the restaurant area. The only option was bar seating (on stools) or outside in a tent on the terrace. I was willing to sit outside but my partner was very upset by this as she had booked it specifically for the interior decoration of the restaurant. The manager could not have cared less and offered us no solution other than to wait "possibly an hour" in the bar area.

No real excuse other than the manager blaming "google integration" for their faulty booking system not booking us a seat in the restaurant was given.

We accepted having to wait an hour for hour seat to become available and had to make our own way over to the bar seating as the manager literally walked away.

No free drinks were offered for making us wait.

After a fairly short time, probably 20 mins, lucky for us a table became available. We were ushered into the restaurant and again were made to stand around while the table was cleared... why wasn't this done before bringing us in to stand around being stared at by others.

The meal was mediocre, dry skewers, undercooked pork. My partner then disappeared to try and arrange my lactose free cake which she had requested a week before but again this had been forgotten. I decided to pay the bill to leave ASAP and asked the waiter to remove the service charge as I didn't feel this was deserved due to our lack of service.

The waitress was quite rude and told me that she would not provide me another bill with the service charge removed but she would just charge me the reduced price.

The waitress then told my partner as the bill had been paid we could no longer have drinks in the restaurant and would need to move back into the bar.

How ridiculous.

We left very unhappy, with my partner blaming herself for how the night was ruined by the restaurant.

Terrible experience.

As a side note, the restaurant itself looks lovely, but that's about all I can say positive...

We booked the standard cocktail masterclass for a hen party of 17 people as the website says it is an interactive/immersive experience and the reviews are also positive. Unfortunately, we had the total opposite experience. On arriving the male host wasn’t overly welcoming and said it was booked for 16 people, not 17. I showed proof of the booking and he huffed and went to get more glasses. We also had a pregnant member of the group with us and when we asked if we could make mocktails instead he didn’t seem very pleased about it. The masterclass wasn’t interactive like other places are. There was no introduction, no games, no ‘banter’ if you like. The host went off a few times to do other things which was frustrating. We also had to ask if we could physically make the cocktails, a lot of them were made for us and this isn’t what we had signed up for. Out of the 3 cocktails made only 1 was bearable to drink. Upon receiving the bill an optional 12.5% service charge had been added. As a collective group we didn’t feel the ‘service’ we had received was worthy of the amount added so opted to remove it from the bill. Upon informing the host of this he aggressively asked ‘what was wrong with my service?’. He then questioned the amount we were paying (we had deducted the deposit and service charge) but he insisted the amount we came up with wasn’t correct. In fact he insisted we owed 10p (?!) and said it ‘wasn’t going to come out his pocket’. We gave the host 10p in change and paid the rest by card. The host made it quite evident he wasn’t happy with us removing the service charge and we all felt was very rude in his response. It’s a shame to post such a negative review as I’ve eaten at the restaurant before and had nothing but praise. However, on this occasion no-one had a positive thing to say about our experience and it was extremely uncomfortable to be aggressively questioned/spoken...