Mykonos Greek Restaurant

To be on the safe side, the Brains thought she’d ring Mykonos to book a suitable table for the Bloggers. The friendly waiter told her that 8.00pm would be fine, and confirmed that he would put a table aside, close to the footpath, with plenty of space for Stinky’s pram.

At 7.45, the Bloggers quickly popped into the Beaufort Street Merchant, picked up 4 bottles of their new favourite cheap Chardonnay and a 6 pack of beers, and set off across the road to enjoy a whole lot of meat, a shitload of chips and something, anything, with garlic sauce. We were very much looking forward to Greek grilled meat feast.

On arrival it was clear that no table had been put aside. Interestingly our names were on their booking sheet, but there were just no tables available. So, our Greek waitress (cleverly disguised as a Japanese backpacker) directed us to the shitty mezzanine floor that’s decorated like a State prison and furnished like a 1960s bus port.

And, alone, from our lofty position high above the humming crowd at Mykonos, we waited. And continued to wait. And for 15 minutes we received none of the following:

1. service

2. wine cooler

3. bottle opener

4. cutlery

5. wine glasses

6. menus

So, we walked downstairs and fetched another Greek waitress, this one in ingeniously disguised as a Chinese English student, and asked her to help us out with the 5 items listed above, as all we had so far were 3 tumblers. After a couple more trips downstairs, and another 15 minutes, we procured ourselves 4 mismatched wine glasses and some menus. The menus were interesting, a half a page of the menu was dedicated entirely to setting out the strict terms and conditions attached to ordering, eating, paying, drinking, etc - like we were entering into some sort of Deed of Eternal Disappointment.

Items 1 to 4 never arrived, leaving the Deliberator and the Sponge to crack open their beers using the side of the chipboard table we were sitting at, and Bito and the Brains drinking wine that was positively sweating.

After reviewing the terms and conditions on the menu, we ordered the trusty tasting plate for entrée, with a large portion of calamari. The pickled octopus on the platter (a team favourite) wasn’t bad, and the dips were fine and the calamari was crispy and fresh. Everything else was a greasy, cold, oily mess. There was also a lot of garnish dressed up as salad on the plate, which was largely inedible and a giant waste of space.

When our mains arrived, we hadn’t finished the platter, so the Sino-Hellenic waitress simply popped our mains ON TOP of our platter and entrée plates. This was quite stunning, and something we’ve never seen before.

It’s hard for us to discuss the mains themselves as they were completely and utterly inedible – and generally, we eat anything. We each left meat on the plate, and plenty of it. This has never ever happened before to the Deliberator and the Sponge. But really, the food was foul. The meat could have been used as a shotput, the spices were completely wrong, the fish was ok, but only just, and the sauces lacked any flavour whatsoever. All in all, it was unbelievably, horribly bad. Which was very strange considering we’d all had very passable kebabs from Mykonos in the past.

We eventually went downstairs to pay the bill. By now, we were unhappy, spiteful and really really pissed off. And to just really hammer home the general shithouse nature of the night, we were charged double the corkage for the privilege of us getting our own wine glasses, and having our wine left sweltering in its paper bags on the table all night. Mykonos, if you’re reading this, you are by far and away the worst restaurant we’ve reviewed on Beaufort Street for service, produce and cooking. At least the Peking Chinese Restaurant had the Chinese Dragon counter.

In summary:

Service: We had a waitress come up twice in 2 hours – once to deliver the entrée, and once to deliver the mains. We were otherwise completely left to our own devices.

Food: So bad its outrageous. And what’s with all the good reviews on eatingwa.com?

Ambience: While the mezzanine floor is awful, the rest of the restaurant has a cheerful, casual Greek-restaurant style ambience.

Highlight: The new curse-words we invented to describe the food. And the calamari wasn’t bad.

Lowlight: Everything else.

Rating: half a lamb kofta (although only beef kofta is available at Mykonos) out of 5.

Will we be back? Sadly, we probably will end up buying more kebabs from Mykonos. But we’ve promised each other to try our best not to.

Details: It’s not even that cheap – about $40 a head for crap. We won’t bother you with a phone number, as we strongly suggest you don’t go. Oh, and it is also worth mentioning that the owner has appeared in the local rag a few times over the last few weeks for allegedly not letting a guide dog in the premises.