Delivery of Ready-Made Food in Cyprus
Covid-19 changed our normal routine and daily lives, more likely forever. Some services and business spheres are no longer relevant; another in the opposite is in demand now more than ever. The need for various delivery services of food and other goods suddenly became urgent what gave a major push to development of this business. In our previous articles we shared with you where to order foodstuff and how to get non-food articles during lockdown. Now we want to expand the topic by adding some information about ready-made food delivery. In order to get all the cards onto piles in this solitaire so to say.
Of course there’s no point to list every single restaurant with the delivery service, that’s not the goal. We want to share some basic knowledge that will be enough for you to navigate through this topic.
Foody
Perhaps it’s currently the most popular website that has a ready-made food delivery service in Cyprus. Foody itself has no own restaurants. It’s a platform where many restaurants post their offers.
Since Foody is a flagship on this market, let’s talk about it in as much detail as possible.
Advantages:
One of the main pros of this website is simple and convenient navigation. First, you can choose food by typing in your postal code. So you will see only those offers, which a relevant for the place you are living in.
Second, you can find “popular categories” in the left part of the page. For example: grill, pizza, burgers, salads, Asian cuisine etc.
Third, you can sort the offers you got in three categories: “distance from me”, “delivery cost” and “minimal order amount”.
Fourth, restaurants and cafes that are closed at the time of your search could be excluded from the list. Also you can filter those, which have no other payment option except for online.
Fifth, there are two scales that allow you to define the range of delivery cost and minimal order amount.
Every restaurant that will show up in the list has a short description, which includes: delivery time period, cost, online payment option, minimal order amount and distance from you. What is more, each restaurant has ranking points that are gained based on reviews from the customers.
I got cold awful coffee one hour late once… So I gave that restaurant on Foody the lowest possible score. As a result I got a call from a manager that day, who justified for a long time saying that “the restaurant serves perfect food, the coffee though is not its specialty”. He added that I will get back the money for that order. That means the ranking of the restaurants is really valued. You can also give a “heart” to places you like if you want to find them again quickly. However the way how that function works is not very convenient, but it’s better than nothing anyway.
You fill in your personal data only once and each next ordering process is a matter of seconds.
Another defining benefit: an assortment. I for example live in Limassol and Foody finds around 200 offers for my location. It’s way more than any competitor could offer. The top positions in the list take restaurants that have discounts. From time to time there are some pop-up windows with super discounts.
Cons:
Suddenly you will get some offers in Greek, so who the heck knows what they are talking about if your Greek knowledge is close to zero.
If you want you can tick “leave my order at the door” box while paying online. That means you hear someone ringing on the door, open it and there’s no one there. Except a nice smelling package with your food. Well, in fact the way how this service works is quite strange. About a half of delivery guys actually walks away but another half seems to be not aware of it at all. They just stand on your porch smiling and giving you a bag. Apparently hardly anyone pays attention to that box.
There is a lack of pictures of food you choose to buy. Only price tags. Photos are always relevant and make searching process more convenient especially when you are thinking about giving a try to a dessert or some exotic dish of traditional cuisine. It’s often the case that description and “super unique” title don’t give you any idea about what exactly you will get in the end. Anyway only several restaurants have a proper menu with pictures of dishes in it. Websites like Foody all have this kind of flaw.
As I mentioned in cons section all the restaurants have ranking, which is good. But why not to go further: not to stay limited to number of stars but create a review data base where everyone can read what people like or dislike about each place.
What Foody offers to you:
The majority of those places are coffee shops or fast food restaurants. That’s quite understandable, after all people prefer to go out when they want to spend an evening in a good expensive restaurant. Because mainly it’s not only about the food but also about the atmosphere of the place. On the other hand many people don’t care much about these things when it comes to snagging a piece of pizza or a burger. It doesn’t matter will they eat it at home or in some typical fast food café.
However Foody can offer you few high-level restaurants as well. I personally like food and drinks from Boho a lot. Prices are close to those in fast food restaurants but the quality of food is much better. Their coffee is the best one I have ever ordered online. Also you can get your coffee with chocolate chip or cinnamon by choice for free!
The following national cuisines are available for delivery: Thai, Indian, Nepalese, Arabian, Lebanese and Japanese. By the way they got also Couzina psistaria. Not the best psistaria in the city to my opinion, but well, thanks for that.
All in all Foody is a good and convenient online platform even taking into account few flaws. Is this service enough to order ready-made food? Well, if you just want to grab a bite, the answer is yes. But with few certain reservations anyway. For example, other platforms can show you similar offers in restaurants different from those on Foody. If you want something you didn’t experience before, you will need more than just one website. Let’s speak about other options.
Wolt
Conceptually you can hardly distinguish this platform from a previous one. It’s also an aggregator website that makes a list of offers for you. But of course there are several differences between them.
First, Wolt is available in 21 languages. That’s really practical. However the menu in some restaurants is still in Greek, you can translate it using website itself.
Second, they have something Foody doesn’t have at all — pictures of food you order. That’s important. Well, frankly speaking, only about 30% of dishes on Wolt have photos, but that’s already a good start.
To compare the ordering process of these two services in practice I chose my favourite restaurant — Boho in Limassol and made an order on both Foody and Wolt.
Prices for the dishes are the same on both websites. But the minimal order amount is different. 7 Euros on Foody and 8 Euros on Wolt. Delivery cost also varies from one to another. It’s free of charge on Foody (if your order is more than 7 Euros; they just don’t accept it if it’s less). Delivery on Wolt will cost you 2,6 Euros. If your order is less than 8 Euros, you have to pay an additional charge of 2 Euros. Well, 4,6 Euros for delivery of one dish is too much.
Wolt has its own delivery service while Foody doesn’t have this option at all. However I guess it doesn’t matter for an average customer who brings an order. It’s rather a marketing ploy.
Wolt’s stylish blue moped trunks look quite attractive.
When the order is created, Wolt shows you a map and time of delivery. Foody doesn’t have this option, but the map isn’t necessary to my opinion.
But the opportunity to choose time of delivery is on the opposite one of the key functions that is both convenient and important. Wolt allows you to select the date three days in advance and set an estimate delivery time. There’s nothing similar on Foody (or I didn’t find it). After you made an order you will get a notification that your food will be delivered as soon as possible.
Now I’ll compare these two websites not by restaurants but in whole.
The main and most important difference is in number of offers they could give you. While Foody is showing you more than 200 restaurants for Limassol, Wolt can offer only 50. But it would be incorrect to say that Wolt is a non-functioning platform. I regularly see delivery guys of this company on the streets. Also taking into account that Wolt is not some no name start up but a respectful Finnish company with its branch offices in more than 22 countries around the globe that constantly grows and develops, it is more likely it will expand its range of restaurants and has all chances to catch up with Foody in the long run.
Another significant nuance. Foody delivers to all big cities in Cyprus. Wolt is relevant only for two of them: Limassol and Nicosia.
When it comes to navigation, each website has its own features. Foody is mostly focusing on “popular search” made in key words while Wolt has a catalogue with categories. Each section has a title, a picture and information about number of restaurants in it. It’s pretty difficult to tell which one is better, but purely visual Wolt looks more stylish.
Categories with the largest number of offers are “breakfast” (11 restaurants) and “sandwiches” (7 restaurants). By the way the assortment on Foody is not a cut-down version of Foody. The main part of restaurants that are shown on Wolt are absent on Foody.
While I was scrolling through Wolt, I found a tiny bug. When you try to open a category in a new tab the pointer “sticks” to the title and doesn’t move until you click it one more time.
Another interesting moment. Wolt has a service that is called “group order”. At the time of writing of this article the lockdown is still in force and people are running from everything that starts with a word “group”. But the idea itself is rather curious.
How it works? You choose a restaurant, click “place an order” button and get a link to the “meeting”. You can share this link with your friends. One order will include all the food everyone chose for themselves. The courier will deliver everything at once.
A perfect choice for a friends get-together and house parties. In conclusion I might say that the website of Wolt company looks more attractive. Its navigation is simpler and the number of functions is larger. But it loses in the range of assortment and final order cost (because of quite expensive delivery). It’s hard to tell which one of these two platforms is better. However the price difference, even when it’s only 2 Euros, probably could be essential for many people.
Bolt
Third biggest aggregator website specialized on search and delivery of ready-made food on the island.
In fact, Bolt was created as an Estonian taxi start up. Over time the start up gave “birth” to the new business branch — delivery of ready-made food.
Unlike the first two aggregator websites, Bolt doesn’t have a web-version, so all the orders are made only in an app. That’s a flaw to my opinion because the more options you have, the more convenient is the service itself. Some people are fond of mobile apps, other prefer more old-school way and use laptops. That’s especially true for Cyprus, where the society tends to conservatism.
There is no guest login in the app. You have to sign up and confirm the registration by SMS. Your location information will be determined automatically. However, Bolt missed me by 300 meters.
The app also chooses your language automatically and shows the offers translated to it. In my case the language is Russian. And well, from one side that kind of approach is convenient but from the other hand the translation is pretty rough and absurd. Some words are not translated at all. Unfortunately, you won’t find any pictures of food here too.
Navigation is not the most convenient ever. The only available search option is by using categories. There are 30 offers for Limassol. The list of the restaurants includes some titles you can find on Foody and Wolt, but the rest is quite unique. For example you can order food at Kapatsos psistaria by using Bolt service. It’s the best psistaria network in my view. Foody and Wolt don’t have it on their lists. But 30 restaurants for Limassol is a really modest offer comparing to other two websites.
The main advantage of Bolt is the delivery. For example to make an order at Jimmy's Killer Prawns on Foody will cost you 1,5 Euros, 2 Euros on Wolt and only 18 cents on Bolt. Low delivery cost applies for all restaurants in the app.
Bolt, just like Wolt, offers its services only in two cities in Cyprus: Nicosia and Limassol.
Two key moments that usually define the choice of the aggregator website are prices and assortment. But looks like we have no winner here. Foody has better assortment, delivery prices in Bolt are very tempting. Wolt could not be discarded because it has another restaurants on the list what means you can get more options to choose from.
Pame Na Fame
It’s a Cyprus aggregator website that covers all the big cities.
The website is quite good albeit primitive. You can choose from six popular categories on the main page (salads, burgers, pizza, Chinese or Cyprus cuisine, kebab), type in your postal code or city name and find out what places are close to you. When I typed in my zip code I got an answer “No results found!” (what means the search engine didn’t find any matches). I got same result when I tried to search by the name of the city. The website is glitching from time to time.
However the page with “No results found!” message finally has a catalogue. So you can start to choose using city names or extended list of categories. The total number of them is more than 40.
The website is available in three languages: Greek, English and Russian. I used Russian one. And was quite surprised by weird titles. There was one category among others that was literally translated into Russian as “fasting/starving”. Even more surprising was the assortment for “starving”: all pizza and burgers. Well, I can understand that for true Cypriots with their culinary traditions it’s exactly how starving should look like: just some burgers and pizzas without tons of fat and frying in butter. But of course it just the wrong translation because in English version “starving” turned into ordinary “fast food”.
For some reason the website is trying to translate every single world. Even the names of restaurants. That looks really strange. “Фриес щитх Бенефитс” doesn’t mean anything in Russian at all and sounds like someone is trying to speak Yiddish. But in fact it’s just “Fries with benefits” spelled in a wrong way and with Cyrillic letters.
The number of offers in each category may surprise you at first. How about 90 restaurants serving Italian cuisine? Not bad, huh? Is there really that many on Cyprus? But the nuance here is that the website shows you every single restaurant even when the most of them are a part of same network. That means 30 out of the 90 Italian restaurants are those by Pizza Hut! So if you count only unique titles, the list of restaurants is far shorter.
No pictures of food are detected on the website. But I found one of my favourite fast food restaurants — Roosters. I simply adore their burger line. But on Pame na fame are only three types of them and what is more, all three of them are kind of strange. Some chicken burgers that cost 3 Euros each that I have never seen before. Hey, where did you hide the rest? Especially when you can find an extended cut with everything they have — a full menu of this restaurant is represented on Foody.
When I got to the moment of ordering something from the menu during my research on Pame na fame I was still quiet loyally. But after that the website got more and more annoying.
First, the sign up function on the website. It’s cool when a website has “guest” option for those who don’t like to share their personal data. Well, it’s a rare thing, I know. However the registration is an unpleasant thing to me, I can understand the pros of it. But it’s not Pame na fame case. The website allows you two ways on how to complete it: you can type everything in or just use your Facebook for log in. You click the second one and…you have to fill in the form manually. Okay, it’s not a big deal. Much worse is that you are constantly logged out of the system. And if you try to log in back, it offers you to fill in the registration form again. So, long story short, it can really drive you crazy. And that’s not all. The menu has boxes you can tick to order a dish. Well, you can’t tick it. I checked it by 30 different restaurants. It doesn’t work with any of them. You just can’t click it no matter if you are logged in or not.
On each restaurant’s page I opened was a red alert written on the top right corner that informs you with following info “Online payment is not available for this restaurant”. Maybe that’s the reason why I can’t choose anything. However, the wording is odd.
In the “About us” section of www.pamenafame.com website you can read following: this is the first website in Cyprus that invented an entirely new way of ordering food online. Yeah, astonishing know-how indeed. You just choose whatever you want and can’t get it. The only thing I’m not sure about is that a really new way on how to do it? Anyway, Pame na fame mastered it to perfection without any doubt.
Okay, I can assume that I just couldn’t figure out the actual way of how everything works there. Maybe I’m not the smartest journalist of my time. But I thought it’s the key moment of every website that everyone could use it and get what they want no matter how skilled in deduction they are. If someone can’t do it, it’s not a customers problem — it’s a problem of the website. Just try to play “stupid” on such a website like Wolt for example. You can’t make anything wrong, it’s simply impossible. We are not passing tests to attend Harvard here, we are just trying to get few burgers to eat. Well, Pame na fame is a complete failure. Definitely won’t recommend it at least until they fix it.
Delivery Man
One more Cyprus aggregator website. Available for all the big cities in Cyprus. Frankly speaking, after Pame na fame I was hundred percent prepared to see another trash-circus instead of proper service. But no. Everything is totally fine with this one. Simple, easy and professional.
Navigation of the website is quite interesting and creative. You can search for the restaurants by typing in your postal code or open a special form with different filters. Choose what you prefer and get the list that meets all your requirements. Let’s say I choose “dessert”, “marine cuisine”, “coffee” and now I get the list with all restaurants that have all three options. Except taste preferences there are filters for cities, methods of payment and rankings (I’ll tell you about them a bit later). All in all it’s quite interesting and convenient service.
No pictures of the food. I can’t get it really, why from all services I have already mentioned in my review only Wolt is the one that has them. It’s very important!
The assortment though is good. Around 80 restaurants in Limassol. Several names of some iconic places immediately catch the eye. Sam's food — an oldest place in Limassol that sells shawarma and which owner entered the Guinness Book of Records. Or good budget friendly pizzeria Per Metro in old town centre in Limassol that is well-known by all Cyprus midnight party makers. Well, the variety of restaurants and the quality of food they serve there is good.
One more thing about the quality: Delivery man’s ranking system includes not only stars but also reviews. That’s a very useful idea. It helps the customers with their choice and at the same time makes restaurants more aware of the quality of their services because nobody wants to be cancelled.
However there is just one small fly in the ointment. The majority of restaurants do not have any ranking points or reviews. I checked who is on top-3 list in Limassol. It’s Pizza Mia, some sort of meze-serving café called Peri tis Ousias Mezedakia and KFC. I can’t say something bad about any of them but still it’s unlikely that these three are the best places in Limassol. Pizza Mia has got the largest number of reviews — 28 against 8 by KFC and 7 by Peri tis Ousias Mezedakia. Which is quite few for being listed as top-3.
Probably the thing is that this service is not very popular. If the website manages make it big in the future, its ranking system is the best one so far. The website design and navigation is really cool and based on the offers it has, so its growth is a matter of time.
You can also make a group order here, just the same as by Wolt. I checked how much will cost to get the delivery from Jimmy’s Killer Prawns and it’s 1,5 Euros. The price is the same as by Foody.
Waiters on Wheels
Another Cyprus original to the extent aggregator portal. This website covers only Limassol with its services.
The first impression about Waiters on wheels — don’t know where am I, whether it’s some porn website or an online casino. Poison-bright colours and everything is flickering. You can’t figure out where is what in one fell swoop.
After looking around a little bit and blindly clicking on this and that I could find a list of restaurants. The total number of them is 24. The most of them are “unique” what means you can’t find them on other websites. National cuisine includes: Greek (as well as “haute” one), Chinese, Italian, Thai, Russian and Japanese. There is even one psistaria on the list: Food Boutique — one of the most expensive in Limassol that serves terribly tasting food in my view. The dishes there is too greasy even by psistarias standards that are marred by high fat food.
The approach to ordering process on the website is quite unusual. Probably it was made to suit the name “Waiters on wheels” that they have only scans of the menu there instead of an interactive page where you can choose dishes, select the number of portions, add some extras etc. Each item on the menu has a code that you need to write down if you want to order it. After that you should call (+357) 2536-2536 and place your order.
In the article about food delivery from supermarkets we already mentioned that old-fashioned way “choose what you want on the website and give us a call to get it” — is a downer. What is more it doesn’t have to be high-tech to create an ordinary “shopping cart” function and add everything you will like to the list. But it’s not that ambiguous in this case. Because if you make your order by calling this service you can choose dishes from various restaurants and still get all of them at once. This is obviously not an option for websites with “basket” button. You have to make separate order for each restaurant.
It’s a fascinating idea to get a delivery from multiple restaurants. However one of the key moments for many people who want to order food from home is avoiding any type of contact. You silently added yummies to the shopping cart. Paid for it online. Ticked the box “leave my order at the door” and voila. But now you have to hang on the phone. To each his own, as they say. Our job is just inform you about as many options as possible.
Waiters on wheels has uniform delivery rules regardless of the restaurant you made your order at. Minimal order amount is 20 Euros. Delivery cost is 2,8 Euros. That’s more expensive comparing to other aggregator websites. Plus you have to pay extra 1,7 Euro for each additional restaurant in your order. That’s a rip-off! That means if you for example decided to take vareniki (dumplings with different fillings) in Russian Gulya’s Restaurant, fig salad in Greek Dionysus Mansion and Tom Yum soup in Thai restaurant Siam Chinese & Thai, the delivery cost will be: 2.80+1.70+1.70 = 6.2 Euros in total. That price could definitely take away a man’s appetite. Also it nullifies completely all the benefits of ordering from many places at once.
That’s all about aggregator websites. This business sphere is quite well developed in Cyprus. At least you have enough to choose from. However these offers can satisfy only demands on simple food like fast food, street food, coffee, cakes and other humble dishes from cheap restaurants. But if you crave for something more exquisite, you shouldn’t limit yourself with aggregator services.
Another type of “everyday” restaurants is also poorly represented on that kind of websites. The majority of clients of “everyday” restaurants are regular customers who buy lunches for their homes or offices every day.
The main flaw of all the aggregator websites is that they don’t have pictures of what you are going to order (that refers less to Wolt because about one third of all items do have photos).
Thus the struggles of choice and possibility to get something you don’t want. The websites of specific restaurants have an advantage in this connection. It’s much easier to create a menu with pictures for one restaurant than trying to organize somehow 200 restaurant’s pages at once.
That’s why it feels not right to end the review only with description of existing aggregator websites. It’s worth to mention few more private businesses that have their own pros while comparing them to competitors. Of course we wont list all the restaurants, which have delivery services here. It could take months to complete. So we are going to share with you few offers for each big city in Cyprus, which we found quite interesting.
Limassol
Sensifood Healthy Food Restaurant
It’s a good quality restaurant that serves healthy food and has simple, beautiful and smart made website. The menu is interactive — you can click on each item and add it to the shopping cart. The most part of dishes have pictures. There are three categories: lunch boxes, menu for today (each day of the week has its own specialties) and drinks.
Prices for lunch boxes varies from 7 to 9 Euros. Portion size is medium. Drinks are represented mostly by juices and kombucha, which is popular nowadays. “Menu for today” is updated daily. It’s impossible to check what dishes will be available tomorrow. Every day you get 29 dishes to choose from. The average price is not more than 3 Euros. Such price policy makes delivery from Sensifood Healthy Food Restaurant quite affordable and credible alternative to traditional home cooking. What is more a lot of items in the menu provide information about weight of one portion, caloric value and the proportion of proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
There’s no minimal order amount for the central parts of Limassol. If you need a delivery to the city outskirts, it will be 20 Euros. You can find a zoned map of the city on their website. Depending on the area you are live in, delivery cost could vary from 0 to 2 Euros.
It is possible to order the delivery to some place outside Limassol too. In this case the cost of the delivery will be calculated individually.
Restaurants that specialize on healthy food are quite few in number in Cyprus. In this situation Sensifood Healthy Food Restaurant is a gift from heaven. Gorgeous website, affordable prices, wide range of options, good quality assortment — a perfect restaurant for everyone who watch their nutrition.
Home cuisine
Another “everyday” restaurant. This time with a characteristic Russian accent. A menu here also differs from one day to another depending on the day of the week. However, there aren’t any pictures of dishes offered in everyday menu.
Prices for side dishes are about 2 Euros. Main courses will cost you around 6 Euros.
Except everyday menu there is a category that is called “custom order”. You will find a variety of pastries, meat dishes, salads and sides there. Well, it’s not a common menu, everything is much more solid. For example if you order a duck with oranges, it would cost you 30 Euros and the weight of such a dish is 3 (!) kilos! Minimal portion of Russian salad is 1 kg. They use this kind of approach for other items in menu as well. Which means that “custom order” could be perfect if you plan a fiest. Or have a big family.
You should book everything you want to by from “custom order” section two days in advance.
The website is in Russian, but maybe you are not mind some experimenting with Google translate and new tastes.
You will find neither “basket” option nor codes of the items on this website. So you just call one of the following numbers (+357) 99 169 351, (+357) 95 72 06 65 and say something like: “Hey, I would like to have an aspic with horseradish” and that’s more than enough to make an order.
Minimal order amount is 20 Euros. Well, I should admit, it’s not a budget friendly option for one person. On the other hand if you buy food for a big family or for your colleagues in office, it could be a good choice. Especially since the delivery is free of charge!
Pagoda
It’s an excellent restaurant of national cuisine. The most dishes are made in the spirit of Chinese tradition but there is also Japanese and Indian cuisine.
Average prices. Wide range of options. The food is tasty.
Restaurant has amazing convenient and user friendly website. The photo of the menu is on its own special page. Besides it has shopping category with “basket” function. Also each and every item has picture, price and title. The total number of items in the menu is 66.
Dishes of Indian cuisine should be ordered separately by calling (+357) 2531 2000 because they are not listed in the menu.
Except basic menu the restaurant offers lunch boxes at a price of 9,90 Euros. Lunch box includes two main courses out of 22 options and 7 types of rice to your choice.
The minimal order amount on Pagoda is 9,90 Euros. The delivery will cost you 2 Euros. However they often offer various discounts.
Coya
This restaurant is for those who want something more exotic than old boring Japanese and Indian cuisine. The restaurant serves no less than Spanish and Peruvian specialties. I think you would agree it’s an original offer at least.
For example you can taste Peruvian soup with fish, mussels, shells and shrimps. Or a real Mexican burrito! (however not many know that burrito is not so popular and common thing in Mexico because originally it’s a part of Texas cuisine. That’s why you can’t impress a true gourmet with a phrase “real Mexican burrito”) Or soaked in wine chicken wings made according to the recipe of Lima citizens (the capital of Peru).
You have to pay for exotic tastes by dealing with inconvenient ordering system. The menu on the website is not an interactive one, has no pictures in it, only prices, titles of the dishes and short descriptions. Probably the photos would be more than relevant when it comes to exotic food.
Item does not have any codes, to order something you should call the following number (+357) 70 00 4010 and tell what exactly you want to order.
Prices are above the average. Even Cyprus coffee costs around 3 Euros here.
Sub X
This eatery is my tiny secret. You can’t find it on any aggregator website. It could be shown on Google maps only when you search by its name. If you just look at the area where the eatery is located, you won’t find anything. What is more there are almost no mentioning of it on the Internet. And its Facebook page is almost “dead”.
Sub X is not an “everyday” or haute cuisine restaurant. It’s just a fast food café. But what a fast food! Their food tastes heavenly! The prices are 3-4 times lower than by Fridays or Joint Burger. These guys make one of the most delicious burgers in the city to my taste. If you compare them to other fast food restaurants in the same price niche, Sub X is naturally the best!
Except standard for every fast food restaurant menu they focus (as the name already implies) on subs — huge marvelous warm sandwiches. However the best item in the menu to my opinion is double cheeseburger. It’s almost the same size as McDonald’s Big Tasty but way more delicious. It costs only around 5 Euros (by the way the price of Big Tasty is 4,20 Euros). I definitely recommend starting with it.
There is only one option on how to order delivery (except the case when you can get there yourself): by calling (+357) 255 67 844.
You can see the menu by following this link but it’s dated back to 2017 and is of really bad quality. As an alternative you can ask for bringing you the menu while you are making your first order.
Sub X is a perfect fast food café. It’s strange that almost no one knows about this place.
Nicosia
Au Bon Plaisir Restaurant
It’s a good expensive restaurant serving French cuisine. It’s one of the best places not only among French restaurants but also among all the restaurants of the Cyprus capital.
Its regular customers come here to enjoy an exquisite steak or mussels prepared according to French recipes.
Everything is quite complicated with the delivery here. Because finely tasted dishes require compliance of many requirements including specific temperature regime, which is problematic when you ride a moped. But from the other side, man does not live on steak alone. French cuisine is also famous for its pastries, soups and salads. Basically you have a wide range of options anyway including dishes that could be delivered without any loss. So, bon appetite!
When it comes to order conditions it’s not so bright as the dishes themselves. The menu on the website is non interactive and doesn’t have any pictures. What is more the fonts are terrible and unreadable. Balance between shapes and background makes your eyes hurt. Probably red thin merged with each other French letters on a pink background supposed to be tribute to the style. But “paying” for the style with impossible to read sentences is not much of an idea.
The titles of all the dishes are French. And they have no codes or numbers. The only way to make an order is to give a call. That’s why if you want to get something from Au bon plaisir restaurant you must be good at French first or have some practice at least. When you fell like you are ready to pronounce everything correctly call the number: (+357) 96 755 111.
Syrian Club
This is a Syrian cuisine restaurant. The website uses the same template as previously mentioned Sensifood Healthy Food Restaurant. It’s not a con, rather an advantage. The template is really user friendly. You can understand immediately what you order — every item has title, short description, price and photo. The “shopping cart” is also very convenient.
It is this rare combination of good and appropriate functions. The restaurant is one of the best in the city and the ordering process itself is not that kind of torture when you call on the phone and try to pronounce French words (as by some other restaurant) but quick and contactless.
The prices are quite affordable. For example meze for two persons will cost you only 36 Euros.
As for me, I hope the locals will forgive me, traditional Syrian and Cypriot cuisines have very much in common. I’m sure there are their own nuances and accents in both (traditional desserts differs a lot) but from my point of view of ordinary everyman it’s like a game “Find 10 differences”. Of course it’s not bad that Syrian cuisine shares many features of the local one. It’s the opposite: first — it’s intuitive, second — you are pretty familiar with the most tastes, third — it’s could be interesting to compare them. Those who visited this restaurant and made that comparison, has left very positive reviews. Syrian Club has high ranking both on Tripadvisor and Google Maps.
The city is divided into three areas available for delivery. Depending on the area you are live in the minimal order amount may vary from 10 to 30 Euros. The delivery itself is free of charge for each of three areas.
China Spice
China spice is a flagship of group of restaurants, among them is Pagoda Restaurant in Limassol I mentioned above. The food, as the name suggests, is Chinese. The total number of items in the menu is more than 85: dumplings of all kinds, rolls, soups, seafood, and duck specialties. People who have been in China or at least in any other South-East Asian country, will definitely appreciate and praise its assortment. Everything looks exactly how they cook it in Asia.
The only thing that differs is prices. For example Chinese calamari fried with salt, pepper and China Spice will cost you around 9 Euros. You can often buy the same dish somewhere in Thailand or Indonesia only for 3 Euros. Well, that’s why it’s called Europe, the prices here are one of the highest in the world. China and Thailand are too far away to visit them every time you want to eat calamari.
The menu is simple and smart. All items have titles, prices and very appetizing pictures. You can make an order by using “basket” function. Delivery cost within Nicosia is 1,70 Euros. Minimal order amount is 15 Euros.
Avo's Armenian Food
I guess, many people who visited old city centre in Nicosia at least once have seen this extremely popular place. Avo’s Armenian Food is not on the main street, the location is very convenient though. Because most of the tourists and vacationers who are walking Ledras Street to the end prefer to go back along well-maintained Onasagorou Street. And that’s where Avo’s Armenian Food is waiting for them.
This is an iconic place that is always jammed to the gills. Here are some reasons for that:
1. Armenian cuisine they are cooking there is very much similar to the Greek one. That means nothing but roasted and grilled meat of all kinds. Or just some Armenian dishes based on the local tastes. How about khachapuri (cheese-filled bread) with anari or halloumi cheese? Or souvlaki in lavash (soft thin flatbread)? So, locals find it both quite exotic and familiar at the same time. Furthermore they make traditional Cyprus souvlaki too. Along with Armenian and Greek-Cypriot cuisine there are also Middle-Eastern dishes.
2. Avo’s Armenian Food is one of the cheapest fast food restaurants in the city. For better understanding: Adzharian khachapuri costs only 2 Euros! And a mashed potato piroshky — 1 Euro.
3. Well, the food here is not really like you are eating and “crying out of happiness”, but still of a good quality. When it comes to delivery service, it’s far from perfect.
The restaurant has no website, only a Facebook page, there is no menu, pictures or description of the dishes. However they offer delivery service. You just call (+357) 22 661172 and try to find out what options for an order they got.
Pafos
Pakora King
It’s one of the best Indian restaurants in the city. India is a big and diverse country, which culinary traditions can vary widely from one region to another. In this case Pakora King offers dishes cooked according to North Indian recipes: they are less spicy than south ones and with the focus on meat. It’s necessary to realize that “less spicy” in Indians understanding means “spicy beyond words” for Europeans.
If you have been in India and tasted the local cuisine, you probably know that you can’t find anything even slightly similar in Cyprus. Because it’s almost not edible for the layperson. It’s insanely hot so that you just chew it and cry without having any chance to understand how it actually tastes.
Of course, the food in Pakora King is heavily customized to local traditions, so you can’t count on (or be afraid of) authenticity. Anyway the restaurant is good and you will definitely find something that is worth to try: wide range of curry, tandoori dishes, salads and of course — pakora itself, they don’t call the restaurant Pakora King for nothing.
Pakora is vegetables, mushrooms, eggs or fish — everything you can deep-fry in a special tempura. Indians love to put in tempura everything you could imagine: even onion and noodles. There are 8 kinds of Pakora in the restaurant: mushrooms, meat, seafood etc.
Pakora King has pretty good website www.indianfoodpaphos.com with menu and convenient ordering system. It exists according to the screenshots on their Facebook page, to be more precise. But at the time of writing it was reported that “the website is not available because of temporary problems”. So, if it is still doesn’t work, call the following number to order the delivery: (+357) 960 39 700. Another option: Pakora King’s Facebook page allows you to make an order at a certain time. Including one month in advance. Delivery service’s working hours are from 15:30.
By the way, you can find menu on their Facebook page as well.
Luccis Milkshakes
The best milkshakes in the city. Besides them you can also order coffee, smoothies and donuts. What is more they could cram some candies and toffees into your glass if you ask for that. Both drinks and donuts are made American-style. That’s when it’s too much and too sweet. Of course it isn’t for everyone, but this café has quite the fans. One big glass of milkshake will cost you 5,45 Euros. There are 30 different options of fillings: cookies, waffles, marshmallow etc. Every additional one will cost you extra 50 cents at Luccis Milkshakes.
The café has a website www.luccismilkshakes.com, but it’s inactive at the time of writing. However their Facebook page is very much alive. The menu also could be found there. To order sweets call the following number: (+357) 77 773322.
Riganato
Well, maybe it’s not the best restaurant in Pafos that serves Greek grilled food, but it’s definitely number one among those with the delivery option. Pafos is not spoiled with many different delivery services, comparing to Limassol and Nicosia. That fact makes already existing offers more valuable. Especially while a restaurant serves good quality food at affordable price.
That’s exactly what kind of food Riganato can offer you. I assume, I should not explain to those who lives in Cyprus what is a grilled Greek food means. But if you haven’t heard about it for some reason, I could describe it as a “heart” of Greek cuisine so to say. It’s tons and tons of grilled meat for every taste.
Let’s talk about prices. For example an ordinary portion of souvlaki in Greek pita will cost you 3,5 Euros, which represents an average price for it at any souvlaki café on the island. And a small portion of meze is about 11,5 Euros. That’s a really low price for that type of dish. But you should not expect a great diversity in this case too: except vegetable snacks and dips you will get few pieces of halloumi cheese, sausages and several slices of grilled pork. Well, even this set could fill the stomach of a hungry man.
Riganato’s website has a beautiful and convenient design. But it lacks pictures of the food. There are some but only one photo for each category. And it’s not always pretty clear which one is shown on the picture.
The website allows you contactless order by using a “shopping cart”. I tried to order the delivery of few items to different parts of the city (I decided to experiment with it because I don’t live there). No matter how big was my order, the delivery cost was not included to it, that’s why I assume that it’s free.
Phukhet
This is Thai restaurant. I was surprised by the domain name of the website. How could an ordinary Cyprus restaurant manage to get it? Even Phuket itself doesn’t have that short one. But maybe it’s because of the additional “h” in it. Okay, let’s get back to the point.
Thai cuisine is not that hot comparing it to Indian. Thai spices will not make you cry and shout “why did I eat that?” They are mostly about diversity of fine tastes, which makes local food exceptional and original. You know it’s Thai food even if you are eating with your eyes closed.
Phukhet Restaurant is the best option in Pafos if you would fancy to eat Siamese food that could be delivered to your door. It has hundreds of positive reviews both on Google Maps and on Tripadvisor.
The menu is available on the website. The assortment is cosmic: more than 160 items. Among them soups, salads, snacks, chicken, duck and seafood dishes. Also you can order a set menu. I doubt that many people living in Pafos are experts when it comes to Thai cuisine. So the lack of pictures in the menu is a big flaw to my opinion.
There’s no “basket” function on the website. But each item in the menu has a code. To order what you chose, call the number (+357) 268 186 78, tell the codes and arrange the delivery time.
Larnaka
Restaurants, which offer delivery in Larnaka, are even few in number than in Pafos. And the majority of them you can easily find on Foody website. It’s “king and god…and a monopolist” here. Anyway few places are still worth to mention in our review.
Holy Cow
This is very popular and, dare I say it, a hipster kind of place with a cuisine in fusion style. In case you are not a hipster for some reason, I’ll explain: fusion cuisine means you can’t identify it as some national specialty or describe it as fast food according to the speed of preparing. Fusion food is a mix of many traditions and styles. Hipsters are obsessed with it. So why not to give it a try too?
But please don’t think that I’m sarcastic and take it lightly. Actually it’s the opposite. This restaurant has one of the highest rankings in the city according to multitude respectful online platforms specialized on reviews of goods and services.
Okay, the menu on the website has 8 categories. Some of them have pretty poetic titles. For example “between bread” category that means sandwiches. Or how about “my salad days”? If you are still curious what kind of food is fusion, here are few more examples:
1. “Hand crafted goat cheese & figs” salad. Fresh greens, goat cheese, cooked dried figs, pistachios, and honey sauce. The price for this kind of delight is 9,75 Euros by the way.
2. “Black garlic & mushroom risotto” main course. Here we have black garlic, porcini mushrooms, portobello (it’s a delicate “retired” champignons), parmesan cheese and black truffle oil. The cost of this one is 13 Euros.
Well, I think you have an idea of the fusion cuisine and can decide now would you fancy it or not. As you might notice, prices for fusion dishes are a bit higher than equivalent traditional food in the restaurants of the same level. Well, sadly, it’s quite expensive to be a hipster.
Despite the fact that the restaurant menu tries to be super hip, everything is far from hip when it comes to delivery service. Good old order by phone is at your service. Call this number to make an order: (+357) 246 501 14.
For the record, this restaurant is also on Foody website, where it has a high ranking too. But the menu on their own website www.holycowneocanteen.com is more detailed and that’s why we devoted few paragraphs in our review to it.
Wok in a Box
Wok in a box is a popular chain of Asian fast food restaurants in Cyprus. Basically the whole point of this place is in its name. Wok is a deep frying pan that is common for Asian countries. And a “box” in this case is a cardboard box where you put everything you fried on a wok pan. What exactly you can get there? Two basics are rice and noodles. Toppings are meat, vegetables, seafood, cheese, eggs etc. Plus you can choose among wide variety of sauces. So you are, loosely speaking, an author of the final dish.
Beside woks restaurant serves also several kinds of soup cooked according to Asian traditions.
Despite it’s a chain restaurant, Wok in a Box often has top places in many ranking lists. It’s represented on Foody as well but not for Larnaka. If you live there and want to make an order, you should use its own website, which is quite convenient by the way. Contactless order is available due to “shopping cart” option. There are not so many pictures of food on the website, but it’s probably okay in this case. Each item is listed in a chart instead that contains information about titles, ingredients, caloric content, proportion of proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
Delivery terms are different for each part of Larnaka. There is no minimal order amount for central part of the city and delivery cost is 1,5 Euros. But if you live in Aradippou for example, the minimal order amount will be 10 Euros and delivery cost increases to 2 Euros.
Shanghai Chinese Restaurant
It’s a good Asian restaurant, which regular customers are mostly Chinese. That could tell you a lot about quality and authenticity of food there. Except Chinese cuisine it also specializes on Japanese sushi.
For some reason there is no menu on its Facebook page. But everything is quite typical: dumplings, rolls, duck etc. If you would like some Chinese food, just call the following number: (+357) 700 07 879.
The stuff speaks Greek, English and even Russian.
To make the whole process of ordering easier for you, I’ve dug the Internet and finally found a page of menu (it’s upside down for some reason but anyway). You can also see few pictures of food there too.
Masalas Indian Restaurant
It is one of the best Indian restaurants in Cyprus. Beautiful and pretty pompous. The prices are above the average. You will pay 14,50 Euros for a curry (comparing to other restaurants where you can have it for 10 Euros or even for 4 Euros when we are speaking of really cheap eateries). A portion of ordinary fries will cost you 4 Euros. What is, I think you will agree with me, a lot. However the prices are offset by the quality and taste of food. Chef has been working at Masalas Indian Restaurant for 14 years already. And he has his own unique secret recipes.
The menu could be found on the Facebook page. But alas, without any pictures. Call the following number to make an order: (+357) 246 44 950.
Well, that concludes our research of the topic “delivery of ready-made food in Cyprus”. As you might already notice, the best option for ordering food nowadays are aggregator websites. However almost all of them are mainly focused on fast food offers, delivery service evolves pretty fast now, so we probably could expect further progress in this area. It is very likely that these websites will grow and include more restaurants of all price levels.
Citizens of Nicosia are the luckiest at the moment. They have the widest variety of options when it comes to delivery. Limassol is keeping up with it as well. But the number of offers for other cities in Cyprus is very limited; they are covered mostly due to Foody. Concerning the villages, especially those located far from big cities, the delivery there is improvised and patchy. If there is some restaurant that takes orders, it’s more likely it has a delivery service too. But it’s still terra incognita for aggregator websites.
After going through numerous offers and options and turning them over in my mind I decided to opt for Foody. I value a large number of different options, affordable prices and a website, which doesn’t have any bugs. Seems like the majority of people living in Cyprus can relate to it because Foody is used more than any other aggregator website. But the final choice is up to you of course.
Bon appetite!