Alana Restaurant - Salaminos 15

This is a great restaurant - deserves its high rating on here and most of the reviews are pretty spot on. Our table was around 7.30 but by 8pm it was much busier and had a great vibe if that’s what you’re looking for. There are plenty of restaurants with tables on very pretty backstreets but this is set beautifully off the road with plenty of plants setting a great scene. The service is excellent and quick but they didn’t make us feel rushed, and gave us a great free desert when we asked for the bill which was unexpected. Perhaps only a 4/5 just because the food wasn’t absurdly good - great starters but felt the mains we had were only ok, nice grilled meat and prawns but fairly uncooked and meagre vegetables on the side - all totally pleasant however and I would highly recommend to anyone, we had a great evening here with a beautiful bottle of Chablis which I thought at €44 was pretty fair (Greek wines haven’t done it for me so far)…in fact the whole pricing of the place was very fair, perhaps marginally more expensive than your average but there’s no doubt this place is very much above average. Go, enjoy.

We went there for dinner. We liked the atmospheric garden and the tasteful decorations. The staff was very fast and friendly. But the food was too expensive for my taste. The appetizer plate for two is very tasty but just not worth the money and comes without included bread even though it's a plate with almost only spreads. The main courses were missing something special in taste and were too bland. Oh, and maybe skip the restaurant at all if you are a vegetarian, because they will only serve you a mushroom risotto, a Beyond Meat burger and some appetizers. Every other main dish is made for carnivores or fish lovers. This felt just uninspired in this day and age. Overall I think that they have a lot of potential and could easily improve. Maybe we just got there on the wrong day. If Google's rating system was more granular I'd give it 3.5 stars. It gets the 4 stars primarily because of the great staff.

These other reviewers must have a pretty low baseline, to rave like that about this restaurant. You are definitely paying for the ambience here, not for the food quality. Food was really lacking in seasoning-after many salt shakes it was decent, but still not worth those prices. Service got overwhelmed and went downhill quick. We ended up waiting 30 minutes after we finished for the check.

I've been meaning to visit this restaurant for a long time. We decided to go today in a quiet time - the restaurant gets very busy at night and personally I avoid such crowds when possible. Service was very quick and polite during such time. The dishes themselves were good, surely pricier than other options in Rethymno but the meat we ordered was really good and well cooked (I particularly liked the απάκι). At the end of the meal they offered a dessert like many restaurants in Crete. All in all a good experience even during quieter hours, would definitely like to try in the evening outside the peak season ?

The food was the best I've ever tasted in my entire life, absolutely stunning! We we're a group of 7 people and ordered 7 different main courses and every single one has been unique and so delicious.

We've known this place since 2016 year. It was absolutely amazing, the food was fantastic and no complaints with service. Unfortunately this year the owners decided to earn for 2020 and 2021 at once and this time Alana disappointed us greatly. First of all their food. It's unacceptable and incompetent to have the same dish cooked in several different ways. I understand, Alana has couple chefs and sous chefs but they have to know how to cut meat to get the best results and stay consistent with dishes and menu. One time we received thinly sliced pork pieces (it was fantastic and tender), the other time we received CUBED PORK and it was tasteless and dry. Another example - fantastic tender squid almost sweet of its’ freshness, the other time it was so burnt that it was bitter to taste, I had to spit it out and send it back to kitchen. Now to their service level - the downgrade is huge. Usually there were 2-3 waiters, sometimes it is not enough for whole restaurant. Sometimes they were too lazy to move quicker or at least to react when we asked them to come. I mean the restaurant was almost empty but we had to wait 30-40 minutes just to pay. When we received charcoal-burnt squid we had to ask for a waiter THREE times. And eventually we received indifferent face and shrugs. Cherry on top. We decided to spend our final dinner at Alana but we were denied at booking specific table we liked and later we were denied with booking a table at all. Well, nice customer service. Ok, we came here to have final lunch and received burn squid, 25 minutes wait to order, almost 40 minutes wait to pay. Once again the restaurant was empty. It's a huge shame for such fantastic restaurant to downgrade and rely on the amount of customer turnover. That nobody will come here so often to see their downgrade and compare… Well, probably the next time we visit Rethymno, Alana will not be on our must-visit places anymore, shame.

The ambience in this place is amazing, so we really enjoyed our experience. The restaurant offers a wide variety of wines to choose from and the menu card is rather rich as well. Our meals were overall tasty and the presentation of the dishes was simply lovely, although I was slightly disappointed in the way lamb was prepared. Dolmadakia was the most outstanding though. The staff was very attentive.

Beautiful place. Excellent menu with very friendly and attentive staff. We went as a family of seven for a birthday meal as recommended by our hotel manager. We were treated really well and got lots of extras on the house including dessert, a beautiful birthday cake and raki of course! The food was delicious and presented really well. I would highly recommend. Keep up the good work, you are doing an amazing job!