Brown Beach Chalkida

“In-depth review of Brown Beach Chalkida kosher hotel - as a kosher consumer”

We stayed here for one week as a family of four with two young children (6 and 3). We booked this due to the kosher food, the location, and the fact that they had a pretty good special offer on at the time. I'm going to leave a *really* detailed review because I would've loved to read something lik… more

We stayed here for one week as a family of four with two young children (6 and 3). We booked this due to the kosher food, the location, and the fact that they had a pretty good special offer on at the time. I'm going to leave a *really* detailed review because I would've loved to read something like this before I booked, but there were hardly any reviews (from after it became kosher), so hopefully this will help someone. If you're looking for something brief, best skip this one ;) Food: By far the biggest problem with the hotel right now is the food. It isn't terrible, by any stretch, but it certainly isn't good. Considering the chain of hotels has plenty in Israel, you would expect the food to be similar to kosher hotels there; it isn't. Breakfast is ok, there were pancakes available on two days that we were there, and those were actually pretty good, but nothing else is anything special. The offering was basically various salads, some bread and spreads, a cheese or two (no feta!), some eggs, a yogurt, two basic cereals (honey loops and corn flakes), a couple of other bits. It lacked things like pastries, or even a toaster, and after a few days of the same stuff it became a bit dull. They also ran out of regular cow's milk on more than one day - while I appreciate that there were problems with shipments coming in, it doesn't make a great customer experience. Dinner is where the problem really lies. It's hard to explain because if I showed pictures you would probably think, hey that looks alright... and the truth is, it IS *alright*, but not more than that. There were usually 2 chicken/meat dishes, with another couple of sides, and a fish dish, and a soup each night, along with some salads and humous (tasted homemade but wasn't great). It sort of tasted like you'd gone round to a friend who was a perfectly OK cook but not particularly *into* cooking - so think like pretty plain chicken, potatoes, rice, etc. Apart from the quality of the food, another massive issue is that it really isn't very kid friendly. You would expect for a hotel to have kid staples every meal - maybe chicken nuggets/mini schnitzels, simple tomato pasta, etc. They didn't have it at all. As a result, my very fussy 3 year old basically just had plain bread every night, with a couple of spoons of soup. Now I can't blame the hotel for my son's eating habits, but you would definitely expect a family hotel to try to cater towards children more. Then you have the pool bar, and, to be fair, the best food that the hotel offers by far is the pizza; it is pretty authentic neapolitan pizza (only let down by the cheese they managed to get hold of) and is really very decent (I'm a big neapolitan pizza guy so I appreciated this). The other stuff there was meh - they had a couple of different pastas which were very very basic, and then salads and sandwiches which are a bit of a waste because you can basically just take from breakfast and make your own (which we did most days for lunch). One notable exception is that the sandwiches at the pool bar seem to be made from the pizza dough, and that bread was *delicious* - but the fillings were a big let down. One good point is that the prices were actually very reasonable. Now if you're wondering about the other restaurant that is mentioned on their website, or the meaty beach bar also mentioned... well, we're also wondering; they don't exist. To be fair, the website now says that the restaurant is Coming Soon (it didn't say that when we booked it), but the beach bar only serves drinks and allows you to order food from the pool bar, which they bring down to the beach for you. Now look, I'm not trying to put you off. For us, coming from London and wanting kosher food, there are very few places we can go to outside of Israel where we don't have to worry about food. And even though it wasn't great, it *was* great to not have to pack a load of food with us in the suitcases, or to worry about finding restaurants, or looking for specific products in shops. The main thing was that we didn't go hungry - it was convenient, and it was plentiful. It's just a real shame that it wasn't better quality, because really, there's no reason it shouldn't have been. (Worth mentioning that we spoke to many people at the hotel while we were there and this opinion about the food was pretty much unanimous, so it's not about us being overly fussy.) Rooms: When I tried to book a room for four people on any of the booking sites, it wouldn't let me; it said the maximum was three people in the room. However, when I phoned the hotel and explained that one of the children could go in a cot, they kindly allowed us to add this in, which made the holiday far more affordable, and this was really appreciated. Because there were going to be four of us all sharing one room, I decided to book the more expensive "bungalow" room, expecting it to be fairly large and more suitable for our needs. The bungalow rooms are located a short walk from the main hotel, and I think they are probably quieter rooms because of this. However, we were a bit disappointed with the size - they were pretty typical of what you would expect from just a regular hotel room, and didn't really feel "upgraded" in terms of size. The rooms themselves were pretty modern and nice - lots of plug sockets, nice bathroom, and useful balcony (especially for hanging wet things to dry) - although please note that there is no particular view from these balconies. In terms of noise, like I said, I do think these rooms are quieter than others in the hotel. When we were in the entrance/bathroom/balcony you can hear the noise from the other rooms, but when you close the door that separates the entrance of the room from the bedroom, it is noticeably quieter - so this may be worth the extra money if you're a light sleeper. Pool: The pool area is absolutely stunning, a beautiful large pool overlooking the sea, plenty of sun loungers and some beds too - really beautiful. The pool itself is ludicrously deep - please be aware of this. We were warned beforehand by friends of ours who were there, so we brought plenty of inflatables with. The shallow end is 1.2m and it very quickly gets much deeper. The halfway point is 2.2m, and the deepest end is 3m deep! Absolutely crazy for a family place. I can swim fine but I do like to be able to stand up when I stop swimming instead of having to try to stay afloat constantly, so this wasn't ideal and I spent a lot of time in a lilo, as did my kids and many other people in the pool. Someone told me that they heard that the hotel is planning to renovate the pool next year by raising the ground - I don't know if it's true, but it definitely should be. However, we did still manage to enjoy it - the temperature was lovely (the pool isn't heated but in summer the water was perfect) and there is also a very small paddling pool (I actually thought it was a fairly large hot tub at first), which my kids actually used quite a lot - and when they did, my wife and I could pull up a beanbag chair and read next to it. Beach: The beach is private, accessible via a 4 minute walk (down either quite a lot of steps or a very steep hill, but the hotel also provides free buggy cart rides if you like) from the hotel. The only downside is that it's stoney (small stones) rather than sandy, otherwise it's absolutely gorgeous. Again there are plenty of loungers, there is the beach bar, and there are even beds running along the length of the pier. The water is beautiful and incredibly calm, with virtually no waves at all. There is an inflatable obstacle course that you can pay extra to go on, if you like (it was 15 Euros, children from 6-12 years need an adult to go on with them, but they didn't charge us for the adult - so actually it was pretty good value). Overall, although I wish it was sand (the stones were really quite painful to walk on, even in the sea), it was very, very good. Service: Very hit and miss. Whoever helped me when I was making enquiries before booking was very helpful, and as I said they allowed us to put a cot in the room, making the whole holiday doable for us. They also booked taxis for us to collect from airport and return us, and they got the child car seat requests correct. (Unfortunately on our last night they phoned us at 6.30am, waking up the whole room, saying that our taxi was waiting outside for us... when it should have been booked for 6.30 in the evening instead. That wasn't great!) However, once at the hotel itself, service really depended on who you were dealing with. The porters and waiters were excellent - really helpful, smiley; couldn't fault them. Some of the receptionists were good, but others less so. For instance, when we checked in, no one really showed us around the hotel or told us where anything was - the porter took us and our cases to the room, but otherwise we just had to go explore to figure everything out. Then when it came to Shabbat (Jewish Sabbath), no one told us anything about how it worked. I went to reception on Friday afternoon and asked "can you tell me about how it works over Shabbat" and they looked almost perplexed and said "what do you want to know?" at which point I said, "when do you give me the physical room key instead of the electronic one?", and he said "oh you can take it now if you want" (if I hadn't asked, how would they have given this to me?). I asked whether Shabbat lunch is offered (it is) and if it costs extra (it does). When I asked what it was, he didn't seem very sure, so we decided to wait and see at lunch time if it looked worth it - it definitely didn't, it was chollent and some chicken legs and salads, so we just had sandwiches we'd made from breakfast earlier, and made Kiddush/Hamotzi on grape juice and challah we'd taken from Fri night. Other people who were there did get the lunch but said it was so bad that they refused to pay for it. Somehow when we checked out of the hotel they tried to charge us for Shabbat lunch, but to be fair when I insisted that we hadn't had it, she removed the charge pretty quickly. Entertainment: Well, there isn't really any. For us, as our children are young and went to bed after supper, it didn't really matter. But other families there with older kids definitely were very aware of the lack of anything to do in the evening. Bear this in mind if it's relevant to you. There is a "Kids' room", but it's basically just a big room with some toys lying around in an enormous heap of mess. Still, my kids did enjoy spending 20 mins or so before or after supper in it. Overall: The truth is we did have a very nice time, and certainly don't regret going. We had anticipated spending our days by the pool and beach, and that's what we did - if you're looking for more than just that, maybe consider somewhere else, unless the hotel gets some sort of entertainment. However, fairly small improvements would've made a massive difference. If the food was better, the pool was shallower, and the communication from the hotel a bit clearer, this would've changed our experience of the hotel from a 6 out of 10 to an 8 or even 8.5 out of 10.

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