I had lunch here last Saturday: the service was fairly attentive, the food mostly good, the house white from Crete was refreshing and the atmosphere was pretty relaxed.

The hot octopus meze was succulent and perfectly cooked (not at all rubbery). The greenish aubergine melitzanosalata was very garlicky -- nothing like the creamy Turkish smoked aubergine meze I'm more familiar with -- great to smear all over bread if you love garlic, but it not so popular with my dining companion, so I finished it off. She loved her Anatolian spiced prawns, and we both liked the cheese and spinach pastries (tiropitakia). The loukaniko sausage and giant bean dish was a little disappointing -- I've had much tastier loukanika from Cyprus (maybe slow cooking leeches some of the flavour -- I normally have mine grilled). Three meze each, bread and olives was enough to fill us up.

I'd recommend trying this restaurant if you like Mediterranean cuisine, unless you happen to be Greek, in which case you might not think it as good or authentic as the food you are used to.

The portions may not be massive or dirt cheap, but this restaurant is literally just round the corner from Covent Garden and the wine seemed reasonable.

My star rating is one - which is over generous of me. I would not recommend the Real Greek to anyone.

It is a massive disappointment. I was brought up on Greek food and this is definitely not The Real Greek.

The quality and quantity of the food is very poor. I can believe that some people who do not know what Greek food should be like and have very poor standards would wrongly think the food here is good - it isn't.

I doubt that there is one real Greek person working in this restaurant and the people who do work there probably don't care whether the food is Greek or not.

Some of the ingeridents used are not Greek, they are substitutes for the real thing. The portions are small which makes the food overpriced.

This may sound harsh but there are far too many restaurants in London charging too much money for inferior food, and The Real Greek is definitely one of them.

I have read some really negative reviews for these restaurants in newspapers and magazines written by food critics who know what they are talking about.

This is a really fab restaurant. Small, cosy and great food and service.

I believe there are some main meals, but the focus of the menu -- and what I have had on both occasions here -- is the Mezze. The mezze are absolutely delicious. I particularly recommend the olives as a starter (the best I've had) and the cheese balls.

The costs are very reasonably, and they average around £3.25 each, so five mezze (which is quite a bit of food) is only around £15.

It's not a massive place, and with mezze we're not talking huge amounts of food, so this is probably best as a restaurant to eat at before the theatre or going out for the evening. But the staff are very relaxed, and there's certainly no pressure to move on. They say on the menu that you can order more mezze throughout the meal, and that adds to the relaxed feeling of the place.

They add the service charge automatically, which I'm never a fan of. It sometimes leads to lazy staff, and an almost obligation to pay the tip. Well I'm glad to say that's not the case here... in fact the tip added on already was to their detriment, as I would have happily paid more than 12.5%. Oh well, their loss!

All in all, fantastic. Really delicious food, good service and the perfect place to grab lunch of a simple dinner before a night out in Covent Garden.

Dined on the evening of 28 December 2007. Extremely disappointed with quality and price of food.

Lamb kebabs presented in a wrap were so tough they were barely edible and we noticed another table had left theirs. The so called "Horta" (beetroot) salad had about four minute pieces of beetroot in a damp squid of a salad and a dry piece of feta cheese.

My wife had grilled octopus which we suspect gave her stomach problems later on. I also suffered, but not so bad as only ate a couple of pieces.

The fava lentil dip was dry with little or no taste.

We wont be going back and will pass on our experiences to friends.