There are three restaurants in Athens with a Michelin star, and based on my reading, only one of them, Varoulko, sounded like it served Greek food – or at least non-French food. So that’s where Jon and I headed one night.
Three things we learned from eating at Varoulko:
1. Greeks eat late. Not Spanish late, but late such that nobody shows up at a restaurant until 10 pm, at earliest, so don’t be the losers (us) who show up at 9:30 pm wondering why the restaurant is totally empty.
2. Tip is included in menu prices (though you should add a little extra if you’re happy with service). Don’t be the clueless, seemingly-deep-pocketed tourists (us) and assume you’re still supposed to add a 15-20% tip.
3. At Varoulko, there’s no physical menu, but it turns out you’re still ordering a la carte. Basically, you’re at a restaurant where everything offered verbally by your waiter is the special of the day, and you won’t know how much anything costs unless you ask. Having never encountered this system before at a restaurant (and we’ve eaten our share of meals out), Jon and I assumed that in the absence of any menu, we were working on a prix fixe tasting menu basis. So when our waiter described a soup and four other courses, Jon and I imagined small, tasting menu-sized portions.
Now, while I consider myself a big eater, it was a real struggle to eat four appetizers, a main course and a dessert in a la carte portions, and I’m still intensely annoyed that our server never mentioned that each of the items he was suggesting would be sized and priced a la carte (appetizers: 10-20 euros each and main courses: 30 euros each). So we ended up with too much food and a tab (260 euros, including wine and our over-tipping stupidity) that was much higher than it had to be.
So if I owned Varoulko, I’d be handing guests a menu that describes how the whole ordering-pricing shebang works instead of leaving promotional literature from Johnny Walker Blue Label on all the tables (seriously, how lame). Or I’d be like other restaurants and offer a plain-old prix fixe tasting menu – then the chef still gets to be creative and the diners get a predictable price tag and reasonable portion sizes. Win-win, no?
Onto the food, then. It had its moments of glory. For example, the crayfish in a tomato-seafood broth (photo at top). The crayfish was juicy, sweet and tender, and the intense broth tasted like the sea without being overwhelmingly salty, the way bad bouillabaise can be. Now I can never go back to the tasteless crayfish sandwich at Pret again.
Jon’s favorite was the squid ink soup with fish cheeks, and I agree that the soup was one of the top dishes of our evening. First, I loved the presentation. I get psyched when a barista does the whole swirly-pattern thing in my coffee, so I was (irrationally) thrilled to see said pattern in my soup. Second, and more importantly, the soup was rich and creamy from the squid ink, while the fish cheeks added texture and meatiness.
The calamari “spaghetti” with pesto on a bed of fried potato crumbs (they could be Ruffles potato chip crumbs, really) was a nice idea. Visually interesting, and I can see how sweet, tender calamari could taste delicious with the garlicky-cheesy-basily goodness of pesto, but the execution ruined it. Enough of the calamari was tough and rubbery such that those bad bits ruined the whole dish. It only takes one rotten apple . . . .
Sea bass carpaccio and the “main course” of grilled trout fillets in a porcini sauce were seriously eh. I blame my reaction partly on the fact that I couldn’t eat anymore by the time they showed up. So let’s start with the portion size. Even if the carpaccio had been out of this world (which it wasn’t), I didn’t need three entire slices of the fillet, and the zucchini wasn’t crunchy enough to add texture, so why was it on the plate? The grilled trout fillet portion was even more overwhelming. Again, three fillets on the plate, drowning in a brownish, creamy porcini sauce. The fillets were a little rubbery, and the earthy, heavy porcini sauce killed off whatever delicacy the trout fillet might have had.
Despite my stuffed crankiness, I enjoyed the restaurant’s dressed-up version of kataifi with pistachio ice cream, even if it did look a little scary. (My two cents’ – desserts should not look like they have tentacles).
Overall, our meal at Varoulka could’ve been a great experience if we’d ordered just half the food (the good half) and hadn’t felt like we’d been snookered into ordering what appeared to be the entire a la carte menu that evening.
Nice review! Happy to see the pics, especially the calamari pesto..so good. Here’s my review of Varoulko, unfortunately without pics http://blindtasting.twoday.net/stories/1896736/
Regards,
alex
Your description of the calamari pesto makes me think of how good the dish could have been if we’d gone some other night. But I did really enjoy our crayfish and soup that evening, so I can imagine how good the restaurant is on a more consistent night.
I had a pleasure to eat at Varoulko yesterday, 3 September. The weather was fine, the table overlooked Acropolis – everything was set up for a nice evening with excellent sea food. But, the aftertaste was bitter, and not because of the espresso (which was good), but because of details which make the difference between a Greek place and a great place.
We started well. The menu was built around day’s catch and included a cold crab salad with mandarine sauce, fried crusty sardine fillets with smoked aubergine mousse and a tiny dash of strawberry sauce, a risotto-like couscous cooked in pork stock with baby squid and a beef sauce (sounds strange, but was probably the very best course of the whole meal), a cod with black ravioli and lemon-egg sauce and as main a grilled red porgy (fagri) with green stewed vegetables and a tomato. We polished the meal off with a chocolate cream with caramel ice-cream (my wife) and chamomile induced sweet bavarois with sharp and refreshing lemon sorbet. Our wine was a reasonably priced Greek asyrtiko.
The food was very good though not excellent. The main course remained a disappointment after the strong beginning, and the lemon sorbet in the dessert almost killed the delicate flavour of chamomile. However, this was minor. The problem was elsewhere.
My wife’s crab salad had a surprisingly great amount of shell and other uncomestible parts. When asked for our comments after the first starter, we mentioned this and expressed our slight disappointment. Our criticism was well-received, a promise to pass our message to the kitchen and to the Chef was made by two of the head waiters and we left it at that waiting that the Chef would probably come to apologise and offer an excuse.
The Chef did indeed arrive. He spent approximately 80 % of the time of our meal (2.5 hours) outside the kitchen amongst the clientele having no chance of controlling anything that came out of the kitchen. He even served to a few tables, those, where he obviously had friends and acquaintances. He did not have 30 seconds for us, even to briefly say good evening. Nor did he have to the majority of the tables. He was too busy sitting down with his friends.
Our water glasses remained empty for minutes at a time – we had to ask for more. This caused the Sommelier to criticise the waiter behind our backs for not having paid attention to the tables. This was obviously very good per se, but we should not have witnessed that. Similarly we overheard the criticisms of the Chef to another waiter who did not serve us at another occasion. Our bread plates remained empty until we asked for more. And we waited 10 minutes for bread to arrive as it “had to be re-heated”, we were told.
I could still disregard the water, the bread, the public lecturing – but I cannot disregard the way the second bottle of wine was served. I did not have a chance to check, taste and verify our second bottle of wine. Instead it was opened before I could see it and it was poured straight into my wife’s half full glass and to my old empty glass.
Nor can I disregard the absence of the Chef at the time when we made our polite criticism. At the end of the meal, we even mentioned that we actually did wait for him to come and that we saw him dashing around the clients, but not sparing us a word (let alone promising us desserts for free or reduction of the price of our bill). It was disappointing. It was what can be expected from a flashy fashion restaurant, not from a restaurant which is supposedly at the top of its league.
Varoulko and its Chef boast one Michelin star since 2002. While the food was close to being of that quality, the attention to the details was missing yesterday. Also the lack of will to correct or somehow compensate for mistakes was not what one expects from a restaurant of this reputation. For a meal which costs 300 euro for two people one can and should expect more.
Hi Teemu, thanks for sharing your experience. It’s so true that a great restaurant is about more than the food, and it’s an interesting question whether or not the Michelin guide’s picks have any credibility outside of France (or even *in* France, actually).
This restaurant was such a disappointment as mentioned in all previous comments. So glad I came across these reviews. We left after the third course because it was just impossible to consume that quantity of food. We were looking for quality and a view of the Acropolis not the parking lot for the cars.
American in Athens, it was good that you took decisive action and left the restaurant. Did you simply ask for the bill after your third course, and was it awkward? [I'm just curious what happens when you get up mid-meal to leave.]
I really enjoyed your review of the restaurant and the photos. Although I totally agree with your idea to give diners the idea of what the prices are as many high-end restaurants in the US/UK do, unfortunately in Greece (even in 2009), the idea still permeates that if you have to ask the price, you shouldn’t be eating there.
Now, of course, as any sensible billionaire knows, one way to keep your money is know how it’s spent…..
So, in Greece, the superficial “look at me, I’m rich and don’t have to look at the prices” still prevails.
But, again, thanks for a wonderful write-up and we did truly enjoy the food, and thanks to you had an idea what the prices were.
American living in Greece: I’m glad this post was helpful, and you raise a really interesting point about why the restaurant doesn’t include prices on its menu. I’d never thought of that (i.e., that if you have to ask, you can’t afford it) – it makes sense, though I do find the rationale silly.