So, our first restaurant to visit in Spetses, had to be Patralis. The oldest apparently on the island. This can go either two ways- Tradition is kept and the standard is good or an old restaurant such as this being completely a red flag. It is a gamble when you see such spiel written in a menu. It looked busy in the kitchen today with a small army of chefs manning the fort. Everybody was ordering the lamb (Seeing as it is Easter) And this did look very appetising, however Patralis is a seafood restaurant, and this is what I came for. Seafood. What this place is supposedly all about. They managed to accommodate us as a walk-in during a busy time, and as we entered you could see a lively fish taverna with views looking out onto the sea.
As a trained chef, I now tend to stay away from ordering prawns from any Taverna, as I have noticed that nobody bothers to clean them properly and take the veins out. (Pet hate and a fundamental technique in prawn prep) Or the dot next to said item on the menu means they are frozen. (Why the hell would I want to order frozen prawns in Greece?) Well, I was the idiot here as I completely missed that on the menu. I either did not see it, or I did not understand the dot meaning at the time. As I dug deeper into this, it is extremely common to cut costs and freeze off season ready for the season itself. It makes me mad though, especially when I can go to the local fishmonger and buy them fresh almost everyday. Give me all the excuses you want, frozen prawns are not going to sit well, with a proper chef or a critic. And if you are both, try to compose yourself: Yes, the prawn saganaki I ordered was in fact used with frozen prawns, and this explains why the dish tasted so mediocre. No, the prawns were not cleaned, and the sauce tasted insipid with no flavour whatsoever- Not what one should expect from a Saganaki. It was watery like somebody couldn’t be bothered to make a proper sauce so opted for a gelatinous stock cube and cheated. Super bland basically, one dimensional and lacking in any different flavours. I could not taste any garlic or ouzo. I put down my spoon as I saw a black line peeping out of the flesh of one of my prawns. “No thank you!” I said to myself “I am done.”
I also ordered a salad, some fried cheese (Which was huge) it needed some honey on it, and some ‘fried potatoes’ (Don’t tell me these are chips, they are not) The squid on the other hand was tender, but overall the food was nothing to get excited about from a culinary stand point. I think we have come across some lazy chefs here, or they have not been shown the way. This little bit of effort and time spent prepping properly can make a world of difference, then learn to make a proper sauce and you might be doing some actual cooking… If Patralis makes the menu smaller, they can deliver fresh dishes without having to use a freezer, but this is not their game plan. And unfortunately, small menus and 100 percent fresh dishes are rare in this part of Greece. When the tourists come to play, it is all about making a profit and nothing more. If I go to a restaurant, I don’t want to see half the menu fresh and half frozen. I may as well stay at home and cook.
