Review: Petros (Greek, Manhattan Beach)

Let me preface this by saying I’d read a bunch of stellar reviews for this place and was really excited to go. The place is about 2 years old (I would guess) and has been very successful.

It was a dark and stormy night.

Well, ok, it was cool (for us) and windy.

Thursday at lunch I called and asked if they had a table for 2 on Friday at 8pm. “Yes, absolutely.” (Huh, ok, that was easy.)

We arrive at 8pm and check in. “It’ll be just a few minutes.” No problem. A couple walks in off the street and asks for a table “it’ll be about half an hour.” They decide to wait as well.

*tick tick tick tick* After checking once or twice, we were finally seated… after half an hour. Soooooo, with a reservation, I still have the same wait time as a walk-in. Lovely.

I won’t even go into where we were seated, but I did in fact ask for the patio when I booked, not knowing how cool and windy it would be. The table sucked, though. That should suffice.

Menus arrive, drink order taken. Waitress comes back with my gin and tonic – “I lost the fight with the lime on the way over here, I’ll bring you one right away.” No problem. Water comes. Bread comes. Waitress comes back to take our food order. We order food. I have to ask about the lime. “Oh, he brought you lemons instead?” (”He” didn’t bring us anything but water. *You* were going to bring my lime.) Lime arrives shortly.

Calimari appetizer was delicious. Tender, nice light breading. Even some deep fried olives and lemon slices in there with it. Ok, maybe this place is ok.

Wait for what seemed like a long while before entree arrives. Food shows up. I had the rack of lamb with mustard and french fries (I’m a sucker for fries) and a little mixed green salad. Mark had the swordfish on something or other. Mine was good, but the lamb was a little overdone for my taste. It wasn’t great. The dressing on the salad was a little oppressive. It literally weighed down all the lettuce. Couldn’t tell if the lettuce had been soggy to begin with, so they covered it with dressing. Mark’s fish was ok. Nothing great. It was just…. fish.

We finish our meals and the dishes were cleared. Server returns and asks if we’d like dessert. We look at the dessert menu and decide on some Baklava. (Hey, it’s a Greek restaurant, isn’t it?) And I order a cup of decaf.

Dessert arrives shortly. 2 pieces of Baklava and a small scoop of vanilla ice cream. The baklava was… ok. Not bad, not great. It was tough, heavy, and not particularly flaky.

And my decaf never arrived. I didn’t bother asking for it. At this point, including wait time, we’d been there 2.5 hours. Yeah. Our check comes, and then we have to get the very nice busser to give it to our server, as she didn’t return. She came back with the processed credit card slip immediately. And we were done.

I understand Fridays are busy nights. That’s no excuse. The food was passable, but for the price, really disappointing. The service was very slow. I believe that in a restaurant like that, I should NEVER have to ask for something I’ve ordered. I asked once. Please don’t make me ask again.

Needless to say, I’ve scratched this one off my list. Better luck next time!