Al Aseel Restaurant Alexandria — Restaurant in Sydney

Went here last night to test the restaurant for a 50th birthday in a few months. We were considering either a restaurant booking OR catering a private event at home. We didn’t tell the restaurant because we wanted to see the “real deal”. The venue is lovely at night. The service, not so much. We were neglected and ignored throughout the evening, getting salads and sides at one stage then waiting 40mins for the mains which were supposed to accompany the salads and sides. When the food arrived we thought the dips, fatoush and tabouleh were lovely. Honestly haven’t had fatoush and tabouleh this good in years. The mains, not so much. We ordered a chicken, lamb and a chickpea rice mains to share. Each main came with a plate piled with rice and two maybe three small pieces of meat on top. By small I mean each pice of meat was about 2-3inches long and about 1/2 inch thick. At first I thought the plates of rice were side dishes, there was that little meat on them. The rice in the lamb and chicken dish was lovely tasting but mushy like it was either old or had been re-heated one too many times. The rice in the vegetarian dish was tasteless. Actually the chickpea rice was just a plate of tasteless rice. After eating we waited for about 30mins before we had to ask for our table to be cleared and desert menus to be brought and they seemed quite annoyed that we were interrupting them. By this stage we were pretty confidant we would NOT be using this venue for our party booking. We proceeded to order deserts and coffees. Our Lebanese coffees came approx 15mins after the deserts had arrived and they were made without sugar and VERY weak. The coffee was delivered with no sugar, no spoons and not enough cups for the table. I had to go up to ask for cups, sugar and spoons. The woman didn’t even look at me and slammed the sugar and spoon on the counter and walked away. No sorry, thank you, nothing. Needless to say they were all smiles when it came time to take our money. 0/10 for this place. Will never go again. Honestly the old Lebanese restaurants dotted around town have MUCH more authentic food and family...

We had a pretty average experience here - some good, some bad.

Good-

The food is really tasty and there is plenty of it to go round. We had the feast and we stuffed ourselves and yet still had 6 full take away containers to take home.

Bad-

The service, in particular knowledge about dietary requirements was TERRIBLE! We ordered the feast and had a few people on our table that couldn't eat dairy (including myself) and we confirmed this with the Maitre D as he guided us to our table. He told us everything would be taken care of.

Maybe 3 minutes after we'd sat down, the food started to arrive starting with bread, dips and salad. We confirmed that this was all dairy free and we were assured it was.

Then about 5mins later 3 separate plates came out with some cauliflower, a single vine leaf and falafel came out. We had no other falafels on the table so we were wondering if we had to split the falafels and vine leaves 10-ways.

Then someone comes out and informs us that these are the dairy free entrees and that some of the dips (including babaghanouj) had dairy in them.

I had already eaten some of the babaghanouj (normally it doesn't) when he told me. Fortunately it's not a serious allergy for me, but I'll still be uncomfortable the next day.

The Maitre D made a peace offering which we accepted but it was still a bit too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Also I strongly suspect there was MSG in the food - a few of us woke up parched and needing water in the middle of the night. I never get this unless there is MSG...

I don't usually give any restaurant less than three but food in Al-Aseel was undoubtedly one of the worst foods I ever tried in any restaurant. First I should say the staff were so kind and helpful, so nothing wrong with the service. But the food was really really horrible! We ordered rahib batenjan which was a roasted eggplant with salsa on it... what a salsa... It was probably a few days old... not fresh at all. Even the lemon on the plate was cut long time ago and had no juice left! The red peppers in the salsa had gone soft and bitter. It was really inedible, and such a terrible start for our night. Labneh was normal, and kibbeh was average and probably the only ok parts of our food. But the grills... The chicken was boiled or simply cooked not grilled on the fire. Only one side of it had seen fire probably for less than 20 seconds. You could still see the raw marinade on both sides of chickens. Very horrible taste, probably the worst chicken in my entire life. And the kafta was horrible too. Still surprised how kafta can possibly taste that bad! The lamb rump skewers were average, with no specific taste or spice. The entire grill dish with six skewers came with a very small supposedly grilled bread which again was not really grilled, and small mixture of onion and parsley.

All in all, I think the food was low-quality, not fresh, and not tasty at all. I don't recommend this place to anyone interested in middle...