Agnanti Restaurant

We went to Agnanti for dinner on Monday night. The place was pretty busy and I had heard that it had traditional Greek food.
We got a carafe of house white wine, it was way tooo sweet. We ordered the grilled octopus, it was way overcooked and very very salty. I like salty dishes, but this was very dry, salty and rubbery. Ovelia's on 30th has much better octopus if you want to try somewhere else.
Next, we got the Sigar Bourek. This was cheese stuffed in dough. It was very bland cheese, and once again, overly salted. It was also very greasy. We drank a tremendous amount of water this evening.
Lastly, we tried the Pastroumali, thinly sliced dried pressed beef and cheese in phyllo dough pie-type thing. It was much too greasy. This was also very salty. I simply couldn't eat it. I was able to choke down the octopus and cheese rolls, but by this point I was at my limit for sodium intake.
The only good part about the night was that they give you a free dessert of cake soaked in a syrup and Greek yogurt with sour cherries. It was pretty good, or I was relived to have something without salt? I'm still not sure.
As for service, it was very slow. When the bill came, we used our credit card to pay and our waitress brought back the receipt for us to sign. She had actually written "please cash" in the area used to fill-in the tip amount. Basically, we had to tip her cash or not tip at all. We found this to be a very bold and tacky maneuver. I had waited tables before moving to New York and have been living here three years, but I have never seen this before... ever. We will not be back.

Agnanti Restaurant was founded in 2002 in the heart of Astoria (little Athens). I dined there once with my boyfriend upon the recommendation of a Greek friend. The environment is very nice as the park is next to Astoria Park. They have indoor and outdoor seating options. We opted the for indoors with AC. We shared the Tzatziki, which we dipped in bread, and a large fresh Greek salad with tomatoes, cucmbers, onions, feta cheese, and olives. He had the Rooster Cooked in Tomato Sauce with Imported Pasta Squares which was very delicious. I had the Tomatokeftedes (tomato and herbs croquets) which were a little salty for my taste. Check out the website at http://www.agnantimeze.com/index.html

PROS: good food, nice environment
CONS: