Ankita S.
Yelp
I have known about this place for several months and was so excited to finally try it out, and guys, it lives up to the hype!
The actual restaurant is beautiful - the decorations can even be seen from the outside and definitely make it seem like a place you need to be! The inside is bright and clean. We went with a reservation made a few days prior and were seated right away. We were given the option of eating in the main dining room or on their patio, which was an enclosed space with heaters. We decided to eat on the patio because it was a bit quieter than the main area, but it did get a little chilly towards the end and about halfway into our meal, we were the only ones on the patio which made it really quiet - by the end, we were wishing we were in the main area.
We skipped the mocktails (no alcohol served here), but would definitely love to try them the next time - they looked really good! We ended up getting several different dishes as there was so much we wanted to try! We got the muttabal, halloumi, grape leaves, cheese and zaatar manouse, and batata harra. All of it was truly very good! The muttabal was very similar to baba ganoush, with the exception of tahini, I think. The flatbread they served with it was EXCELLENT. It was warm, soft, and delicious all on its own and even better with the muttabal and batata harra. I didn't know what to expect with the manoushe, but the crust was crispy and the flavor from the zaatar was very homey. I would say the food is not pretentious at all, but they do it very well.
Though rare for us, we decided to get dessert even though we were stuffed. We decided on the umm Ali and my husband got a single Turkish coffee to go with it. The dessert was good, but very sweet personally and I'm not sure I would get it again but my husband enjoyed it with his coffee quite a bit.
The staff were overall pleasant. Our main waitress took excellent care of us, but the waitress who brought the coffee and our bill didn't say a word to us or even smiled.