The Real Greek - Windsor — Restaurant in England

I went to the Real Greek restaurant with my Greek friends on last friday and there are a couple of things I’d like to share with you, dear gourmet readers. The location is ideal : Between the Windsor castle and the Thames river, can hardly do better. The restaurant was busy but lively and welcoming. I liked the general ambiance and the decoration, tableware, the second floor hosted 2 talented traditional musicians and all in all, it raised our hopes up and all started well.

I must admit that I’m still a novice when it comes to Greek cuisine which wasn’t the case of my friends who call this country home. Long story short : They were extremely disappointed by the quality of the products and felt embarrassed by this place calling themselves “The real Greek”. We ordered various mezzes to share all together to a nice waitress who, by the way claimed to be German when she clearly wasn’t (I recognised an eastern european accent as I do speak the language...)

It might sound anecdotal but if you pretend or claim even the slightest of things in the service industry which implies a lot of customer interactions, without being honest to your guests who come to spend money in your business, how can you build some recurrent loyalty based upon that? Will the customers feel respected and valued as such?

Now meals were various : But not homemade with the exception maybe of the kefte (Greek burger style) that I found great and seasoned amazingly! The fries were good. Chickpeas and hoummos not fresh and random. Tzatziki not made with greek yoghurt, sloppy, simply not flavourful enough. The calamari were teeny tiny and had a hint of burnt flavour but I honestly didn’t mind it with a sparkle of lemon on it. The pita bread was really tasty, well done for that! Greek salad very poor and poorly seasoned. Dolmadakkia (grape vine leaf filled) was, and I’m sorry to say, almost inedible... It tasted only vinegar like straight out from a tin can...

The portions were tiny, the quality of the food and the experience overall just went downhill throughout the evening and it’s a shame because it really started well. The manager was lovely though, he took some time to come and listen to our feedback and apologised, offered the desserts or coffees but we politely declined.

I would say, I might go back there for the atmosphere and drinks only. But if you are craving for some authentic Greek food, with decent quantity and quality for reasonable prices, I’m sorry to say, this is not the place you are looking for. You can find much better elsewhere as being in the UK is not a valid excuse to find delicious and genuine...

I’d start this with clarifying that I have eaten here before and the food was actually very good hence the three stars as maybe the restaurant was having an off day.

However, as someone that puts a lot of faith into honest reviews when deciding whether to try somewhere new, I do think anyone reading these with thoughts of visiting should be cautious about whether all the positive reviews are genuine.

I visited recently with some friends for lunch. The food was terrible and the service wasn’t great either. I found the waiting staff really miserable and hard work. Usually, this wouldn’t be enough for me to warrant leaving a review, however one of the staff members presented our group with business cards, telling us to leave a positive review and he would take the dessert’s off our bill.

I have to admit, as customers this made us feel very awkward. As a group, we wanted to flag this guy down to tell him we would rather pay our bill in full, however he actually never came back to us at all. I would add that we were sat there for four hours on a busy Saturday and whilst we were chatting away, I felt the staff could have come back to actually see if we needed anything else as I’m sure we all would have enjoyed some more drinks. We were left to our own devices and I really felt that as a business, they lost out on creating more revenue as we would have liked more drinks without trying to awkwardly flag down waiting staff who weren’t interested in serving us at all.

The fact that the staff tried to persuade us to write a positive review on google by offering free food is unethical, dishonest and made us feel awkward as customers. We did not want any free food, happy to pay if it meant we didn’t feel pressured into reviewing however the staff removed the items from the bill anyway (we didn’t review the restaurant at the time) then walked away again.

This is totally wrong. They should concentrate on actually providing good service and good quality food which would warrant good reviews.

If you’re considering visiting, I would be wary of all the positives as the overall restaurant experience wasn’t great. I probably would not have bothered to write this if the staff hadn’t of made me feel so uncomfortable by telling...

This is a mixed review Thats why they are only getting two stars.

The meal was for two people, straight away the table was way too small for the size of the dishes, just felt too cramped, too close together.

List of what was ordered Chicken Skewer Lamb Skewer Pork Skewer Tonia’s Prawns Falafel Humour Tzatziki Olives Chips Flatbread

My partner really enjoyed her dishes, but hey she likes all this food. I’m not the biggest fan, but will give it a try.

I had the Lamb and Pork skewers and I was very very disappointed, both were over cooked and very chewy, the chips were stone cold £4.35 for a small bowl as well and how the hell can you charge £8.50 - £9.25 for about 4-5 small pieces of meat on one skewer is beyond me, there was hardly any peppers or onions on them as well.

But that wasn’t the worst part about the whole experience. As you can see on the attached photo it says “Optional Service 10%” when my partner said she will be paying by card the waitress came over with the machine and it already had the full amount including the extra 10%, she just needed to tap her card. I feel the way the restaurant/waitress just automatically enters the full amount is absolutely disgusting and they should be ashamed of themselves. It puts the customer in a very uncomfortable and embarrassing position about asking the staff member to enter the amount without the extra 10%. It should be up to us if we want to leave a cash tip and not a tip on the card.

Would I go back here or any of their other restaurants? Nope not in a million years!!

If I’m being honest I thought the whole meal was a rip off, thinking about it, it’s in Windsor so it’s really a tourist trap and not for the locals.

We spent £88.99 on our meal and tip, should have gone to the Harvest, would have got a better meal plus have change for a...