Vassilis Souvlaki Greek Taverna

I can’t say I agree with a lot of the other reviews. The pasta is amazing! Not usually what I order at a Greek restaurant but it was fantastic! They offer eat in as well as take out. Cute and cozy atmosphere, great date night spot! The waitresses were very engaging and the owner was very nice. Will definitely be back!

I would give this restaurant a –10 star if I could. Not only was the food very mediocre, the attitude of the restaurant servers and the owner was beyond despicable. We came here for a holiday party and were in a rush to leave so did not get a copy of our bill for expenses. We came back later to have another meal and get that copy, but the waitress absolutely refused and said she could not find it. I found the owner, whose attitude was belligerent throughout and could not find the bill even after we paid this restaurant TWO MORE VISITS. Our attitudes were sincere and we apologized for the inconvenience, but this man to this day kept pushing us off and repeatedly broke his promise to do a simple task for his customers.
After suffering through this ordeal I strongly, strongly advise anyone and everyone to avoid this establishment like the plague.

Worst customer service Greek Restaurant in town. Do not bother. Owner was rude to customers.

Made reservations for a work group party and no mention was ever made at that time that we could not have separate bills on the phone call. The food was standard greek food, nothing stood out as great at all. When we asked for separate bills the waitress refused and said we could not have it. We asked to speak to the owner who at first refused to come out and even talk to us. When he finally did come out he said no we could not have separate bills and they told us when we made the reservations… they did NOT ever say it in the phone conversation.
The owner started to argue with with us and we told him we need separate bills to pay as each person was paying their own bill. He got angry with us and started to yell and we told him to go away because he kept yelling at us. He walked away yelling at us and pushed chairs & table out of his pathway. It also seems that the waitresses are afraid of this man, I would be too if my boss treated me like how he did to us.
Our waitress finally got out a pencil & paper and a calculator and did the bills separetely on scrap paper, not even on proper receipts… which tells me that this owner is not claiming all his income with the tax people.
Canada Revenue Taxation people, you definitely want to audit this guy!!!
This is the worst (and obviously most shady) dining experience I have ever had in my life. We will never ever be going back and we are letting others know of this horrible experience so no one else has to go through this. The owner has no concept of good customer service at all and thinks its smart business to argue with his paying customers. AVOID THIS RESTAURANT FOR LARGE PARTY GROUPS!

This place was very cute. Has plenty of character! Food was alright. Room for improvement. You will enjoy your meal and be full as you get 3 sides with your main dish ;)

I’ve only been in here twice and I got bad customer service both times. I definitely won’t be coming back here anytime soon.
I had the Chicken and Pasta. It was decent. I liked the sauce and the mushrooms. I thought it was a bit overpriced though.
If only the service was better, I think I would have given them a better review.

Just ate here for the first time last night and it was absolutely delicious. The medditeran chicken was done perfectly and certainly exceeded my expectations! I was filled with instant regret when I tried my friends calamari and didn’t order one myself. Service was quick, friendly and the whole place just felt authentic. Look forward to going back soon!

Sign flashing open. Advertised open till 11 pm. @ 10:02 pm met at the front door with a sorry we are closed sorry we won’t be back.

My friend brought me out here for dinner tonight and I had a really good time!
We ordered the Vassilis platter and the calamarj and it was so filling and tasty. Loved the prawns and the veggies and the pilaf. Everything tasted good with the tzatziki :)
The service was excellent, but what really made this place stand out was the atmosphere and décor. The place was decorated so nicely and everything was really cute. The atmosphere was warm and friendly, felt like home.
I’ll be coming here again!

I used to come here years ago all the time. Since then the portions have gotten a lot smaller and the prices a lot higher. The food quality is still good though. I love the roast lamb.
However, I dislike coming here because the owner is a real eye sore. He always looks angry, never smiles at you, and is always getting angry at the servers.
The servers are great, friendly, prompt service.
But having to see the owner be so rude is reason enough to stop visiting (especially after the raised prices and shrunken portions)

The atmosphere here is cute, quaint with lots of candles. It’s a bit too dark for my taste though, I like to see what I’m eating! Hubs and I shared the authentic greek platter for two, which was really enough food for 4! We took most of it home. The calamari wasn’t great, greasy and chewy. Spanakopita was delicious! Our Moussaka was good, but still cold in the center when it arrived at our table. Greek salad was a fresh and tasty, but didn’t have any onions which I found disappointing. The roast lamb was amazing, fall off the bone tender! Service was good, friendly waitress. My biggest complaint was pop. I ordered a $ 3.00 coke, which was a fountain drink in a small hot beverage glass, which I was informed came with no refills. 3 dollars and no refills? are times really that bad vassilis?! I could understand more if our bill was more like $ 20 not the $ 90 we spent there. At least be like the cheap sushi houses and give me a can with a glass so I know that’s it. sad tuba!

Why have I stopped going? Bill’s attitude! («the owner»)
No altercations, disagreements over bills, food, etc. — no axe to grind that way. Food was good.
Over 28 years, company gatherings, introducing friends, etc. Bill was never friendly and wouldn’t to this day be able to call us by name (if he could he sadly failed to do so even once in those 28 years — although going there on a frequent basis — sometimes bi-​monthly). He never acknowledged our regular patronage.
He used to have some excellent staff that knew our favorite wines, etc. but they are gone. If he doesn’t know my name after 28 years when others can learn it in months then I will go to other places where people will greet me with a warm smile and a friendly greeting (and know my name — remember «Cheers» theme song?)

«The Greek place with the Ferrari parked in front». That is the claim to fame for this place.
Parking is available in a nice big side lot. There is also the street on the other side.
On the way in, I noticed that a) the Ferrari had expired license plates (January 2014), and that it was attached to a trickle charger. But I digress. Nice car.
Staff were friendly, though I felt bad for some of them — not sure what was being said exactly, but the owner was barking at them in another language (Greek?) as they were grabbing the menus and leading me to the table. Maybe it was just a bad day, but it spooked me.
The restaurant is quite large — I really liked the spacious back room. Most of the other guests were seated towards the front of the restaurant, so the back was quiet, which is good for conversation. There is also a large walled patio in front — this would be a great place to enjoy drinks during the summer.
Calamari — mostly rings. Nice and fluffy. The tzatziki clumped though (ie too thick), so it was strangely difficult get it onto the individual morsels.
Buttered prawns — exactly as it sounds. Nice lake of butter. Prawns were okay-​sized.
Roast lamb ($ 21) — nice tender pieces, but could be a bit more tender. Meat mostly peeled off the bones. Served with rice. The Greek (feta) salad tasted really bitter for some reason — more so than most other places. Is it supposed to take like this? Rice and potatoes were good.
Normally I’d be giving a place like this 4 stars, but I had to drop it 1 star because of the price. This is definitely on the expensive end of the spectrum, with entrees at $ 20 – 25 instead of the usual $ 12 – 20. With that said, the food was decent.

Dining with three other friends one evening. One of the lamb dish had a piece of metal the size of a hair pin and it was charred. We showed it to the waitress and she came back and apologize saying it was part of the grill that fell into the dish. She told us the dish would be free so we reorder the same dish. When our bill came we were charged $ 10 for it. She explained we reordered a new dish so that’s the $ 10 charge, but she said if we kept the old dish it would have been free. My friend could have chocked on that piece of metal. I already filed a compliant with Vancouver Coastal Health and I’ve contacted a few newspaper agency also.

The food was okay, but over priced.
The service was horrible! Our server tried to banter with my friend, but it came across as condescending instead of funny. The food took ages to arrive after we ordered. We asked for separate bills when we ordered, and when we got the bill it was all together– not the end of the world, but our server was rude when we used a calculator to divide it up ourselves.
I won’t be going back anytime soon.

Had a really wonderful meal and the ambiance was very well done. Portion of the dishes were big, with lots of flavor. I will definitely be coming back in the future.

Really torn on this review. Ate there for my first time on Tuesday night for my staff Christmas Dinner. Before going into any further details I do want to stress that there was roughly 16 of us. Also, it is quite the large restaurant and was decently busy for a Tuesday night before we arrived.
Service — overall, the service was weak. I understand you are quite busy and it is a large table but getting a drink was a painfully long process and having your water or pop topped off was extremely slow and only if you’d ask. They were very nice, polite and friendly. Another big problem was the ordering, 3 people ordered the lamb medallions (amazing) and 10 minutes later we were told that they only had one left. As a result 2 people got there alternative food while most people were finishing or already done. The person beside me had clearly ordered a lamb souvlaki but they brought her a chicken souvlaki in place of it… and she ended up eating at the same time as the other two. I think had they not been understaffed this would have been a different story but unfortunately that was the case this evening.
Food —
Appetizers: I loved the tzatsiki but found the hummus a lil garlic heavy. it was still good but extremely overpowering. I wasn’t very impressed by the calamari, it kind of tasted bland to me. .but I generally prefer smaller calamari. So that could have just been me. The lamb medallion that i ordered (lamb sirloin wrapped in bacon) was perfect. Perfectly cooked lamb wrapped in delicious bacon. So tender you could cut it with a butter knife. The potatoes and rice were amazing but the salad was lacking. The tomatoes were kind of mushy and the salad was overpowered by the amount of onions in there.
Atmosphere —
Typical greek restaurant.
Overall–
Loved the food and did enjoy our servers but feel they were understaffed and couldn’t give us the best service they could. Will give them a shot in the future, hopefully coming back with better things to say.

I want to give Vassilis 5 stars for the experience and meal I had a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately, it far exceeds the three previous average experiences I had here by about 2 stars. The inconsistency of taste experience is an issue for me.
My last meal was fantastic. The lamb shoulder was PERFECT. I’ve worked in Greek restaurants throughout the lower mainland was a driver and kitchen assistant and nothing I ever tried at any of those place, which were all good, can touch the food we had during our last experience at Vassilis. My girlfriend loves it there — she raves about it as her favourite place, but I didn’t see why on our first few visits.
I’ll keep going back, keep rolling the dice on getting that 5-​star meal because even the value on a 3-​star meal is pretty decent.
I find the service hit and miss — the servers are sometimes more about them than about the customer. That’s okay though — it’s pretty casual.

The only reason I go here is for the food, usually I will just order takeout so that I don’t have to sit through a meal of atrocious service.
Everyone from the owner to the servers are rude. They are loud and unpleasant. Makes the dining experience terrible. Gotta give the guy kudos though he’s got a nice Ferrari parked out front.
Anyways, the food like I said is good. Probably the best Greek option in Burnaby with an extensive menu and good portion sizes. Try their meat dishes, the lamb is always good here– cooked to perfection. Appetizers are also a must try– spanakopita (freshly made), moussaka (eggplant dish) and their dips are great. Tons of flavors in everything and very fresh and tasty. I like the food here because it is well seasoned, don’t you just hate it when you go to a restaurant and everything is either bland or salty?
The ambiance is nice and cozy, bots of décor and the place feels very out-​of-​place located on kingsway. You kinda feel like you’ve been warped to Europe. If you don’t mind unnatentive rude servers, then this place will be fine for you. Otherwise, don’t expect too much in terms of service.

Vassillis is just a few steps from where I live so my husband and I were eventually going to try it out.
What caught my attention was the sign that said «Best Greek Food in Burnaby», but for my husband, it was the ferrari parked outside.
The ferrari must be because of how well the owner is doing and it really shows in the food. I was impressed with the food and we ended up finishing everything. I would have given this place a 5, but I think it deserves a 4.5 because the waitresses seemed a little snooty. Not sure if I went on a bad night for them.
We ordered the Mediterranean Chicken, Kalamria Dinner and Homous with pita. The dishes were pricier than another Greek restaurants, but I definitely think it’s worth it! They were also decent sized portions so after we finished, we both sat there for a bit since and wondered how it was possible for us to finish every last crumb.
Oh yea. this is how we roll! Literally. I almost had to be rolled home because I couldn’t move.