This has to be one of the worst ones so far for Porto Heli. I should have known when I saw literally nobody eating here. The place was empty… Wake up La Reine Gourmande! This was your sign, an indication, a clue to what was about to happen to you. Yep, I missed it completely. We cannot always be right, can we? The menu passed my usual checks, (it was small) so I said, “lets give it a try.” Big mistake.
The bread, I recognised it- It was coming from Drougas Bakery down the road surely. Drizzled with some olive oil and a sprinkling of herbs. Ok hardly a disaster there. “Do you have some homemade lemonade?” I asked, dying for a thirst quencher. After a few miscommunications about what this was they said delightfully, “yes of course!”. As I took a sip into my glass I squinted, it was 100 percent lemon juice near enough. I know that Greeks have a fascination with lemon, but this was going too far. “Ok, they do not know what it is” as I turned to my guest, my eyeballs popping out my head. I put the glass down never to be touched again.
The food was an attempt at home cooking, thrown together without any skill learned. Perhaps it was their first day in the kitchen, and I was the mouse in the lab being tested on. If not, I have even less sympathy. (How can you not know this is not good?) Nobody has been honest with the ‘chef’. Time to gather everybody around the table for a difficult discussion… The squid which we ordered, took a long time to arrive. (Were they defrosting it?) I will never know, but it didn’t taste appetising in the slightest. It had a strange whiff about it. Surrounding the squid was a mountain of veg placed around the perimeter of the plate. Probably just sat there for some decoration. I question what ‘presentation’ means to this restaurant. I was put off and I didn’t eat a lot of anything, even the salad. Just no. Game over. I was in a bad mood and hungry for the rest of the day.
