Athens Family Restaurant

I want to like this place. Portions good, food very tasty, little bit expensive for some items — but the service after I finished my meal was very slow.
I didn’t mind waiting for my food. Menu says it is made fresh. Got it. I will wait for my meal.
However, when I am finished and the waitress largely ignores the guests in dining room — that does not reflect well.
I like the ambiance, family owned, everything else was okay — just the service.

Good restaurant with good food. In particular I really enjoy the souvlaki chicken. Not a lot of space especially during a busy lunch hour, but the service is pretty quick. The staff is friendly and courteous. I think it’s one of the better Greek restaurants in Nashville.

Good food served by Katie who provided extraordinary service considering she was being run ragged by, at the time, her only other table a clueless family of eight! Clueless but dang entertaining. «What does dadgum mean?»
With my extensive Greek salad experience I could not pass up the chance to judge Athen’s version. Unique Greek dressing: no tart vinegar flavor (my preference) and so thick I wondered if it was mayo based.
The Athens fries with extra feta were won-​der-​ful.
Wanting to try the Triple D recommended bacon wrapped lamb burger but considering it was darn near 9:30 PM, I opted to sample this lamb burger meat via the Bifteki. The meat was alright — pretty dry. Thank goodness I received a double helping of the homemade tzatziki which was deeeeeelicious and added some much needed moisture to the dish.

Had the gyro to go and it was good. Nothing great but decent. Breakfast was delicious and simple. Affordable and open late!

Our last two meals at AFR have been disappointing. The food is rushed out from the kitchen. On our last visit the spanachorizo (one of our favorite items) was a gummy mess, the chicken was overcooked and the bifteki was flavorless. We have noticed that service has slipped since they hired a tall, loud server with a bullying manner. The owner/​manager has not been around and the female servers are missing. All these things seem related. We will not return to Athens Family Restaurant.

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’m a sucker for restaurants featured on the Food Network, but I also adore Greek food! My name is Anastasia, after all…
Our server seemed a bit preoccupied, but after he explained how much he had been working and that he had pretty much hit zombie status, I felt nothing but sympathy. It didn’t hurt that everything we ordered was so delicious! We got the villager salad (the best kind of salad — no lettuce!), tzatziki and a spicy feta spread with ample pita. All the right flavors were there. The one main gripe I have with most Greek places doesn’t even apply. We didn’t need more pita. The ONLY issue I had was the one (huge) piece of feta in our salad. In my humble opinion, it should be dispersed throughout. Other than that one tiny grievance, my experience was on point. Three small items of note: they have a parking lot! It’s a miracle! Also, their prices are amazing and lastly, I would like to suggest that they add saganaki to the menu — I think it would go over well.
Not only will I be here again, but I’m telling everyone I know traveling to Nashville to check this place out as well!

My wife and I went to dinner at Athens Family Restaurant in Melrose today. Things went well from the very start.
Here is my dinner order.: I had an appetizer — a Spanakopita. Next came a cup of Avgolemono soup with a couple of pieces of pita bread. This was followed by a large piece of Kotopita with rice pilaf as a side dish. My dessert was a piece of Baklava. It was some of the best Greek food that I’ve had in years.
As we were finishing up, the owner, Chef Adel, came to our table to chat with us. He was on Guy Fieri’s show on the Food Network showing Guy how to make Kotopitas, the dish I had tonight.
We shall return to this restaurant often and as soon as possible. I highly recommend it to anyone who likes Greek food.

Love this place! The food, the atmosphere and especially the service!!! Deaja was a delight!!!

I’m a big fan of this place. You can’t go wrong with breakfast food and Greek food on the same menu! Staff is polite, prices are affordable and food wait is not to long. Sometimes this place gets packed and there is a wait for seating. This place is definitely a gem in Nashville!

Athens is a pretty good restaurant. Sometimes it’s better than others and I wish it were more consistent. I like the Moussaka a lot, and when it’s good it’s great. But when it’s bad… no thank you. Their breakfast items are nice to have all day but watch out for greasy items like the ham and eggs in the Big Boy Breakfast. The service is just okay.

I’ve been eating here for many years and it’s a rollercoaster ride of good or bad. One thing that seems to be constant over the past couple years is the crappy service. Here’s a tip: customers don’t like to hear whining wait staff. It’s a buzzkill. Put a cork in it and get me a refill sometime today. The food quality has improved as of late but it’s not that great when you’ve eaten real Greek food. No self-​respecting Greek would serve the garbage they try to pass off as pita here. How this place got on Diners, Drive Ins and Dives is beyond me. Fire the staff, clean the bathrooms and go eat Greek food in Chicago.

I have been here many times. We usually have at least 4 in our party. Food is always served hot, fresh and in a timely manner. Prices are reasonable. I usually get their sampler plate. That way you can try different things.

I have been going to this restaurant for a few years now and at first I had some nice waitresses and good food. I feel that the service is slowly going down hill for a while. I always have to wait for one more addition to my meal. Like if I order toast. It’s not there. Today I had 3 different waitresses and my wife had shells In her eggs .
I think the food network thing has got in their heads

I’ve been to the Athens a few times over the last 8 years, and I have to say they do a better than average job on just about everything. If you like Greek food, it’s tough to do better anywhere in Nashville. My personal favorite is the avgolemono soup. On a cold day, I will drive out of my way to get that hot cup of joy. Love the salads, love the lamburger.
They could do with a remodel. I don’t think they’ve done a thing to the place the whole time I’ve been going there. But the staff has never been anything less than lovely.
I take issue with some of the negative reviews on here. Most of them seem to come from folks who ordered not-​Greek food at a clearly Greek restaurant. OK, fair enough to say those items probably shouldn’t be on the menu if they can’t be done well. But the other side of that coin is how self-​absorbed do you have to be when you go to a Chinese restaurant and feel the World of Unilocal absolutely needs to know your kid complained about the hamburger on the kids’ menu, you know what I mean? There’s the option to just say nothing, you know.

It shouldn’t surprise me that I don’t really agree with Guy Fieri. Athens is good, not great. Maybe we ordered poorly; we didn’t choose entrees that would be considered classic Greek dishes. My beau ordered a breakfast scramble and I chose a grilled shrimp dish (which was the best thing brought to the table, IMO).
The service was what really dropped Athens from four stars, down to three. We never we brought refills, which is always a turnoff to me.
TL;DR: Stick to the Greek dishes, sip your beverages.

The diner type feel on the inside makes you feel as though the people working there just know how to produce quality dishes. The service was very personable and I immediately felt taken care of.
I have done both breakfast and lunch here and both were worth coming back for. Breakfast has been an omelette or skillet and both left me satisfied with the wonderful blend of flavors. Just classics done really well. For lunch, the lamb burger is something I would absolutely recommend if you enjoy lamb. Also, the chicken souvlaki platter was so authentic. The Tzatziki sauce was delicious, but did lack a little kick.
Growing up in a Greek household, I was searching for a place that I could enjoy traditional and authentic cuisine and this place did not disappoint.

I’m obsessed with Thai and Indian, but Greek food is my thing! There is no cuisine I enjoy more, and I’ve even traveled to Greece to dine on this incredible food in the motherland.
Athens Restaurant has the best Greek food I’ve tasted in Nashville, but I’m worried by some of the negative reviews that this restaurant may be terribly inconsistent!
Personally, I’ve only had great experiences here; succulent lamb dishes, grape leaves from heaven, baklava that melts in your mouth. I even saw local Greek personality Demetria Kalodimos eating there; I recognized her and she recognized me. Her presence gives the restaurant a little extra clout in my book.
I love the big city hours, staying open into the AM hours and round the clock on Saturdays.
I will continue to come back to Athens and hope I don’t have one of the negative experiences a few others have had.

I have no idea how this place came to be rated so highly. I found it to be completely unimpressive, and overpriced for what you receive.
I ordered the Greek salad with chicken. The salad itself is $ 8.50, with a $ 4 add on for chicken. The base salad consisted of an oblong dinner plate full of lettuce, with ONE SLICE of tomato, 5 black olives, 4 pepperoncini, 4 small chunks of cucumber, some feta and two small triangles of pita bread. At least the chicken seemed to represent a decent value. And, to their credit, the Greek dressing was housemade and divine. But not worth $ 12.50.

As a guy whose wife actually finds garlic breath to be irresistibly sexy, I take Greek food very seriously. Having visited there several times as a teenager, I have fond memories of the friendly people, amazing food, crazy parties, and avoiding the tap water like ebola.
This restaurant appears to be converted from a fast food establishment to a diner-​style place with an Aegean nautical theme. I had the beef souvlaki with the regular sides and some spanakorizo and topped it off with baklava. Aside from a bit of gristle in the souvlaki and the lack of kick in the tzatziki everything was quite good.
As Greek restaurants go in the Nashville area, this is as authentic as I’ve seen. They aren’t playing around, the chef knows his stuff, and that puts them head and shoulders above the goofy gyro/​kebab joints that infest this town. How all the burgers and fries and shit snuck their way onto the menu is beyond me, I’d love to see a full board of Greek-​only dishes if they’re all the same quality of the souvlaki.
The restaurant itself could really use some updating, but it’s on par with the other businesses on that street so they don’t stand out as unkempt, the interior just doesn’t quite match the quality of the food itself.
Don’t let the three stars fool you, it was A-​OK and I will be coming back to try the other Greek dishes for sure.

This was one of the best burgers I ever had and my first ever lamb burger.
This lamb burger was good tasting, very juicy and savory. The server brings you the lamb burger on a delicious bun, next to a bed of fries and a pickle on the plate.
It made my mouth water as I watched the server bring it to the table.
I have to say this is the best lamb burger I ever had best of all burgers period. I have never eaten a lamb burger one before now and wished, I had been eating this, better than beef to me.
This was an amazing lamb burger with the succulent lamb meat and feta cheese sprinkled all over the top Lamb burger, giving it a very umami and flavor, the bun was delicious with the juices soaking in.
The golden fries and on the plate made the entire dish look good with great presentation.

The restaurant was clean and the waitress and hostess were very nice, I really had a great time and it was a good atmosphere in the restaurant for me.