Athens Pizza and Pasta

Wonderful small resteraunt in the heart of Des Moines. The pizza is good, the baked spaghetti and lasagna are wonderful. Gyros have more meat than any other place I’ve visited in the South Sound. Staff is fast and friendly, bring the whole family.

After a 15 hour day of traveling, I wanted something quick and something that I don’t usually have at home. I saw their menu in my hotel room and decided that I wanted a gyro. The pita was hot and crispy on the outside which was odd because it usually isn’t done that way but that’s how I like it. Kudos for that. They were generous with my meat and sauce. Flavor was great. Gave me a tiny bit of onion which was good because it didn’t overpower but still gave the flavor (I forgot to ask for no onion). I also had a small greek salad which was fresh, salty and perfect. Lost a star because of the strange parking situation. Hard to get in and out of and back onto the street.

I love this place! I’m a vegetarian so I have plenty of options. I just wish they had fries. Come on management!

Horrible customer service. I asked for fettuccini to go and the server did not tell me they no longer served fettuccine and served me something different. When I called to speak with the manager he was unable to do anything until the head manager came in. When I finally had to call back to speak to the head manager he said I was the one to look at the wrong menu and it was my fault. Horrible!

This place is quite and the food is delicious especially the BBQ chicken sandwich and the lamb gyro sandwich and they have the lunch combo whichis consists of half sandwich and soup or salad for good price

I have eaten here since it opened, new owners, old owners. The food has always been consistent up until tonight. Bland red sauce, salads missing from the order, no sauce on the meatballs. ugh. The service has been questionable for months, we have resorted to just getting to go food, and each time we wait for our food, watching the dine in customers suffer is painful. I mentioned it to the new-​old owner and nothing has changed. We will be giving this restaurant a break for a while. Very sad.

This place is owned by the previous owners from back in 2004! The food is good they have a luck special for $ 7.95 a half a grinder (sub oven baked) with soup or salad !
The staff is always friendly ! Seems like she’s been there for a while and gets my order right every single time !
They have a tv if you want to watch a specific channel just let them know they have background Greek music playing all the time.
The dinners are great pizza is fabulous, they have beer and wine (not a variety)
In overall this place is good !

Decent food with a decent price. Their food always tastes the same as the time before which is nice because they are consistent. I normally go for their lunch special with a half sandwich and a salad for under $ 10.

My Gyro was bland :-/​I was hoping to have a better review if this place since the original owners are back, however we ordered several dishes I also ordered a meatball sub/​grinder to go which was good but pretty average! Really was hoping to have my socks knocked off but the tazki had zero flavor!

Give them a try, the original owners are back!
If you look at some of the reviews you will see that this place went through a rough time between 2007 – 2013 ish. Well, the people that owned and operated prior to 2007 are back and the food is perfect once again. I stopped going to Athens about 5 years ago, but now that the food is back to our standards it will become a weekly outing I hope. The place is clean and quaint. The service is exceptional (family owned), Happy is the best!
I’ll give a quick rundown of what we had tonight and what we thought. The spanakopita, pizza (Athens special, lamb gyro dinner, lemon rice soup, and greek salad were all excellent and very reasonably priced. They have draft beer, although we wish they had Manny’s or Mac and Jack’s instead of Redhook but we’ll hint at that next time we go in. I had to top off my meal with a piece of baklava, it was good but I wanted a bigger piece. To be fair, I say that every time I have baklava.
Ultimately, Athens is back to it’s former glory. Do yourself a favor and give them a shot, you’ll love it. Great food, good prices, nice location, friendly staff, draft beer. Need I say more?

A non-​profit I work with needed good food for our volunteers at a festival we did at nearby Saltwater State Park last August (2013). We wanted locally owned and close. We found Athens Pizza and Pasta with a web search.
We worked directly with Happy, the owner, to order the food. The experience was fantastic!
First of all, everybody absolutely loved the food. We had many types of pizza, plus grinders and greek salads.
In fact, it was so well received that when we were asked to get some pizzas for a Saturday night jam on the beach, we called Athens. Again, rave reviews.
Based on our experience, we are planning on doing the same thing this year. We will probably add more grinders to the mix. They are delish!
For something like this, you will need to pick up what you order. They don’t deliver.
Kudos to the crew who really worked hard to get our large order ready. Everybody was just great to deal with.
We’ll be back.
PS. we’ve already had a board meeting in the area, for this same organization. Instead of waiting in a long line at Wally’s Chowder House which is virtually across the street, we chose Athens. Again, the food was terrific. We were able to move a couple of tables together to accommodate our group. Everybody was very pleased.

Completely underwhelmed with the new/​old owners. We’ve been loyal customers throughout different owners for 12 years. 24 bucks for 2 half grinders & salads, no drinks for lunch. It seems excessive and we will be giving Athens a rest for now

Comfortable Greek place with a good gyro.
Here’s how they can up their review score:
1. Get french fries! Come on!!! I would order from here more if there was a better side option.
2. Continuing on #1. do NOT get the side of potatoes. Do not. It’s basically huge cold slabs of potatoes cut in half and drenched in butter. (See picture.)
3. I returned side from #2 and ordered the side of rice. It is definitely Rice-​a-​Roni.
4. The waitresses always seem a little bored and on their cell phones behind the register.

this place, i would call, consistent. not THE BOMB but not terrible. you can always expect the food to be average and consistent. almost like a never let down because you could always depend on it to be average. i ended up sharing a pizza with a friend. we put pep, sausage, artichokes and maybe some pepperchinis? it was pretty tasty but i think the crust was a little off for me, i’m not sure if i could recall what the issue was but it just wasn’t doing it. ehh. i would definitely come back but the prices are kinda steep for it just being consistent and average. guess i will have to weight my options next time.

The food was horrible and the staff was rude. My party ordered several different types of food and it was all gross. The garlic bread was just sandwich bread with a little bit of butter and garlic powder on it. My friend’s 5 yr old could have made better food and been nicer serving it then this place. I will never go there again and would never recommend it to anyone.

As you can tell from all the other reviews this place is family owned and the staff acts like it isn’t. They pay little to no attention to the customers. The ONLY reason I give this place 3 stars is because I know the staff sucks so I order to pick up. The Pizza here is damn amazing. They don’t deliver, they use to but don’t ask about it the staff gets offended. But let me go back to the Pizza for a minute, it is AMAZING. You literally can’t get anything like it around here. All the toppings are under the cheese and the crust is delicious. This isn’t your Italian Pizza, its greek and its great. I recommened anyone visiting Des Moines to try this Pizza. Just make sure to order take out.

Ok first off the only reason I tried this place is because I had a coupon from my entertainment book. My first red flag should have been when the family next to us had a newer version of the same coupon and the waitress came up to them and spouted out that «Just so you know that coupon requires a 15% gratuity», the man was in utter shock! How about a hello first?
Ok so the waitress came to our table and I showed her my coupon because I had a feeling this was going in a bad direction and man was I right! She said ok on the back it says gratuity should be between 15% and 20% and we have chosen for it to be 18%. I said well why cant it be 15%? She then replies well it could be 20%. I said ok well I wont argue we are hungry and would like to order. (Are you kidding me here!!! 18% is what they add on at restaurants for parties of 10 or more!!!) After we order the man leans over to us from the other booth and says well what do we do if the service is poor and dont feel a tip is appropriate? I have no clue!
So the rest of our meal was just average. Honestly I could have made better tortellini at home. My sauce was super thin and actually tasted like it came from the fridge and microwaved, it was no where near hot. The only reason I parted with two stars is because my husbands canneloni was steaming hot and the garlic bread was decent. The rest of our meal the waitress came over with some sort of attitude and Im guessing it is because I questioned her tip percentage.
Dont get me wrong Im not a cheap skate when it comes to gratuity but I do not like to be told how much I WILL tip at a establishment for a dinner for just two people. I dont think that is good business to demand right up from how much I will tip them before they even say hello. Instead of focusing on how much your tip is lady how about focusing on great customer service!
I will not be going back if this is how I was treated for simply trying to redeem a coupon that they published, if they dont like it then maybe they shouldnt participate in that kind of marketing.
Not to mention our stomach aches later that evening from dinner.
Never again, and I will warn my friends and family.

Stopped in for lunch because we were in the area and found a buy one get one coupon. Ordered two pizzas. We thought the food was good. However the aditude was sad despite the coupon saying on it gratuities and taxes were excluded we where told that because on the back it suggested a 15−20% gratuity to the pre discounted bill there would be a manditory 18% added to the bill. Sad that people feel that gratuities should be give for showing up. I felt bad that I didn’t have a trophy for them too, he was doing a great job reading the paper.

This place gets four stars due to reflecting perfectly the price they should be charging.
It’s a small, quiet place. The kind of restaurant where you seat yourself and aren’t missed.
They have awesome daily specials. For example, a half grinder and bowl of soup during lunch hours for six bucks and change. A whole grinder is seven fitty or so and they’re good.
Their pizzas are also really great. It’s definetly worth a go.

I have been here several times over the last few years and definitely plan on making more trips in the future.
I don’t think I have ever left here without a to-​go box. Weather it’s pizza, traditional (huge) Greek dinners, or grinders that are at least a foot long you have more than your average selection to choose from.
They have all of the Italian American favs along the lines of pasta with tomato and meat sauce with melty cheese. For an actual Greek style be prepared to load upon the carbs. I can pretend to pronounce let alone spell the yummy sounding options they offer but I have tried the lemon chicken and suggest you do the same. Their lunches feature a list of grinders that will have you skipping the large chains for a return visit. If your not into left overs at lunch bring a friend, split a sammie and order an appetizer salad or spanakopita (Flaky phyllo layers with a spinach and feta filled center).
This place is totally casual and very family friendly but could also be a great date spot with the Des Moines theatre across the street and the Butler Bar like two doors down.