Zahli Contemporary Middle Eastern Restaurant — Restaurant in Sydney

Great food, served quickly and it was delicious. We had two starters, baba ganoush and lady fingers, which are filo pastry rolls filled with feta cheese and parsley. Both were great. And then we had two mains, the kafta and the mansaf lamb. Again both excellent. They cook with very good quality meats and of course great arabic spices and recipes. Really wonderful food. But the service is just too intrusive. Someone was coming to our table at least every five minutes and we were trying to have a nice friday night dinner together. We don't need our water topped up every five minutes. And they attempted to take dishes away before we had finished them, Which was not a problem and we laughed about it. And then after a shared desert, without asking, the bill turned up at our table. And shortly after it arrived a senior person arrived with the pay machine for payment. I have never experienced this in a restaurant anywhere before. Without us asking for it, the bill turns up and then the guy turns up and wants payment! We dine out a lot and we travel a lot. Zahli was the first restaurant I have been to that brings the bill and then the payment terminal, without asking. They were obviously wanting us to leave. So I said to my wife, "they obviously want us to leave," and the man with the payment machine heard my comment and then went into a story of how they didn"t and they are not all that busy and don't need tables at this time. He did not attempt to apologise or to make us feel appreciated in his restaurant at all. And this happened while we were obviously enjoying each others company and having a good dinner discussion. Well trying to, while being constantly interrupted by Zahli staff and management. If they didn't want us to leave why then did they bring the bill to our table before we asked for it? We were in a good discussion enjoying our night out. The person who bought the bill to our table without us asking for it, I can only conclude, must have been trained to do that. In all other dining experiences you are left to enjoy your meal and discussion until you want to leave and then you ask the wait staff for the bill. Is that not the usual etiquette in...

I was visiting this restaurant as a guest invited by others. Overall, the food was great, but not very good value for money, and the service wasn't much to tell home about. The waitress did recommend the banquet when asked, but the problems started when some of the group didn't like to eat seafood.

First it wasn't possible to change 2 out of a group of 6 to have a non-seafood version, even though the banquet was for minimum of 4 people, so they must have had a fish suitable size for a group of 4 (the excuse was that it's "one fish" and it can't be split). After that, the suggestion was that we'll get some falafel instead of the fish, which didn't quite sound like a fair trade (and definitely wasn't), so we ended up with requesting more meat instead of the fish, which everyone agreed on. What was not mentioned beforehand was that there was only 4 kaftas to replace the fish, not even one extra per person. How much more does two kaftas actually cost for the restaurant, was it really worth saving money from this at the cost of a customer experience?

No matter how I try to calculate it from their menu list prices, the "banquet" they served was about $400 worth of dishes for over $500. All this time the waitress was reminding us not to eat too much bread and complimenting how good of a job we did finishing the whole meal, it felt like he was just trying to cover for the fact that the portions were pretty small and the food was overpriced.

Three stars for the food, which I think was excellent although way overpriced. Two stars for the service, which I found quite dishonest but still polite, so one star would feel unfair. Three stars for the atmosphere which was very clean and modern, but not particularly atmospheric. I'm actually surprised this is considered as a 4.4 star experience on Google at Surry Hills, I know plenty of better Lebanese restaurants around the city. Please get your...

Good Food, Good Atmosphere, EXTREMELY overpriced. I really liked this place..until my last visit there...

The owner Mohammed is very nice and attended us as soon as we walked in. However, the service went down hill from there. We went there for my birthday. Had brought in our own cake too which we asked him to bring out later for us.

Negatives:

1. They were being extremely pushy with the appetizers(because they are very overpriced and small$$$$) , to the point where we were uncomfortable and felt pressured to order more to satisfy them.
2. while they were being too busy to bulk up our bill with the overpriced undersized appetizers, they didnt even ask if we wanted anything to drink, even tap water. 3)they never came back to take our order for the mains, we sat there for 1 hour waiting and no one even asked if we have ordered our mains. 4)when the bill came out, there was a $20 charge for cake. They never told us this, or did they have it written anywhere. I asked the owner what this was, and he said it a charge for them to cut and bring out our cake, which they never ever mentioned before hand. Very disappointing because we were returning customers there. We expected atleast for him to offer to take the charge off when he noticed we were upset, but he didnt even offer it. What is $20 on a $200 bill, but the principle...