Xenia Greek Kouzina — Restaurant in Ellicott City

I took my 7 yo daughter to Xenia today for Valentine’s Day. I came before a few years ago and remembered the food was cool. Our goal this year was to get her to try different foods outside of French fries and nuggets. The menu was preset which i was not aware of because i would of not come. The food this time was okay nothing spectacular but she did say she really liked her roasted Chicken. So a win is a win.

As far as our service. It took almost 20 minutes for our waitress “Keri” (i believe her name was because thats what it says on my receipt, she never introduced herself to us) to come take our drink orders. She then made us put all 4 of our options for the 4 course meal at once. I know this was not mandatory because the table next to us had a different BETTER waiter and he did not require his patrons to do so. He also offered them bread and even cleaned their table off in between courses. We had to literally ask for bread that didnt even come out hot. At this point i am realizing that our dining experience would not be the best. But i knew it was busy and i tried to just bite the bullet and look at the brighter side of “At least she isnt rude”…. UNTIL THE BILL CAME!

First of all there is a “delivery fee” on the bill… im confused so i asked her to what it was and very matter of factly she replied “the tip”. Since when are tips considered “delivery fees”???? Upon booking my reservation on open table i was never told gratuity was automatic, especially for a party of 2. But once again i didnt complain because at this point im ready to go home being irritated with my whole experience. She brings the bill and i immediately put my credit card on the table and she walks off without grabbing it. Almost 15 min later she comes back to take it. So i grab my phone so i can remote start my car. She brings my card back right away, i sign and wait a little because my car isnt warm yet. She comes back less than 2 min later and literally says “THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE WAITING TO BE SEATED HERE JUST TO LET YOU KNOW”.

At this point i had it. I grabbed me and my daughters items and left to the front to ask for a manager. Some guy named ben is there and i tell him what happened all Details. All he can say is “oh ill handle it next time you come back ill take care of you”. And tried to rush off. I said you didnt even ask who my waitress was? Hes like i know and says a name. I said idk her name she never gave it to me but there she is right there as she was walkin by. And he goes oh no thats not Tracy. And then Tries to rush off again saying. “I got you next time ill remember your gorgeous face”. VERY PATRONIZING, DISMISSIVE & actually DISGUSTINGLY MISOGYNISTIC, As to say my name or complaint isn’t important enough to make record of because im pretty??

If i could give this restaurant 0 stars i would. I spent almost $300 on subpar food, awful customer service and non existent response to w valid complaint. I would never go back here and Keri i hope you read this and know that i wish nothing but the worst for you and hope you have an awful day for ruining my 7 yo daughters Valentines...

Wow, what a disappointing experience. Where do I begin….if you do still decide to dine here, expect to pay expensive prices for food that doesn’t match quality and prepare to be hungry after.

We initially chose to try out this restaurant because of the hype on the internet and the ambiance looked amazing online. I will start by saying that we where sat immediately when we arrived and our waitress Angela was good. But, unfortunately that’s where the positive stops.

We noticed the restaurant was loud when first going in , but once we sat done it was worse. We literally had to yell to each other to talk and our waitress had to bend down so close to our face to take our orders. This is probably due to the fact that they pack small tables to the max in the restaurant. This tables where the smallest tables I have ever sat at! The tables where so close together, we ended up having a conversation with the people next to us. I have upload photos to show how close the tables where next to each other. I think this is extremely tacky for what’s “supposed” to be a high end restaurant.

Fast forward, we where served water that tastes horrible. I had to send the water back!! Who has ever sent water back! Me! because it tasted like it came from the tap at semi room temp. However, cocktails where good but not at $20 a cocktail. Now, to the appetizers. We ordered the octopus and fried zucchini chips. The octopus was good but the zucchini chips where a very small portion, not $18 forth but far and where meh. I should also mentioned, we weren’t served the complimentary pita bread, which is 2 pieces cut in 4 , until after we received our appetizers and at this point the table was completely full because the tables are extremely small. (NOTE to restaurant, if you are going to serve small portions of food, at least give your customers complimentary bread that is enough to offset the lack of food)

Entrees, my husband had the steak and I had the lobster ravioli. Steak was decent , however the lobster ravioli was missing the lobster. I mean there was some lobster but mainly filling. Also, forgot to mention that it was 7 raviolis full of filler and by far not worth the price.

This establishment is probably one the worst restaurants I have been to. Food, seating and noise is not worth the 5 star dining prices that they have attached to the menu. This restaurant should be ashamed to charge ppl these prices for the quality and quantity of food that is served.

I almost forgot, when I put in the reservation I mentioned that it was a birthday dinner and also requested a more intimate seating, however, she knew are request bc she mentioned that the tables with the more intimate setting wasn’t available and we would have to wait. I say this to say, that we weren’t even offered a dessert. I have never had this happen at a restaurant. But, again it was so loud our waitress couldn’t have a conversation with us. i would not recommend this restaurant to no one. The whole experience was just so...

This was a very disappointing experience for me and my friends. We drove out to this supposed nice restaurant on the false hope of a good time but we were met with failure in each category of the outing. The service was the best part of dinner and even that was starkly changed after the beginning of our issues. One of the people in my party who loves pasta asked the opinion of our waiter between two menu options and while he was responding some other waiter interjected and proceeded to try to upsell the seafood pasta (not sure if it was because it was more expensive but I truly hope it wasn’t due to the taste) and so she ended up ordering the seafood pasta. What she didn’t expect was that the pasta this waiter was raving about, to be the most bland noodles known to man with seafood on top of it. Keep in mind that this plate was $50. She tasted the pasta and absolutely did not like it and asked the waiter if there was a way to exchange it for something else since she didn’t like it. The manager came up to our table and told us that it’s not their policy to exchange food because it was already prepared so they couldn’t re-sell it. I was absolutely shocked because while I understand that if someone eats some of their food and tries to return it they can’t at some restaurants, obviously, however that was not the case at all. The plate was barely touched. To make matters worse this man tried to make an analogy to going to 7-11 and ordering a Mountain Dew. He said that if you ordered a Mountain Dew and took a sip you wouldn’t be able to return it, which is inherently false. You can order something open it and not want it and return it. Also, I’m hoping that his analogy to a supposedly high end establish (in his mind) to a 7-11 wasn’t because he thought that was the high end restaurant style that my party and I were used it, but because he just didn’t have the processing power to come up with another lie. I have never in my life gone through such terrible service and I will not be advising any of my peers to visit this sad excuse of a business. I myself ordered the bolognese pasta and it was also subpar. If you can’t cook pasta then don’t. The lamb was good and the crab cake was decent so maybe stick to the things you CAN make and fix the menu prices so that things that belong in the trash aren’t priced as if they might taste good.

Terrible terrible, I really feel for the staff, they must have to deal with horrible admin if they have to keep promoting...