Nuba in Kitsilano — Restaurant in Vancouver

First off, it's not a fancy, walk in with diamonds sort of place. It had wooden tables and chairs but it had a charm about it. I would guess it is set up in the same way as the restaurants are in Lebanon. Service was excellent and the waiter was very knowledgeable and helpful in his explanations. Now take note! I eat like a bird - normally! I don't know what happened to me! Maybe it was that I didn't have a plate full of food in front of me but a tray of various food to choose from and each bite was just right. So you take what you want when you want it - and I wanted it all! From what I could gather while eating is that, to me, Lebanese food is similar in taste to Greek food but milder is maybe the word I'm looking for. There were 3 of us so they fed us accordingly. We started out with the hummus and baba ghanouj dipping dish. There was just the right amount of garlic in the hummus and I've never had eggplant before but the ghanouj was quite tasty. It was served with their type pita bread to dip with. It was very hard to stop scooping, dipping and eating this that is until the next dish arrived being the garden falafel and the Halloumi Cheese. This is a cheese from Sicily which can be grilled but does not melt. I don't normally care for falafel but this one was tastier than I thought it would be. While we were eating I looked around and noticed everyone was following the new norm and it relaxed me a bit. My friends and I sat and laughed, munched and soon the main course came. Wow! I wasn't expecting that! La Feast it was! We had skewers of beef and chicken, prawns, cauliflower and roasted potatoes! Thank goodness I was wearing a loose dress! And thank goodness we decided to box up the leftovers so that we could have desert! Mmmm who can pass up chocolate cake with ice cream and what might have been blackberry sauce. Don't care - I ate it all and oops, I forgot to share. The other two had the bacala(?) desert. I think theirs was good because they didn't share either! If you want to go somewhere that has great food, great service and a relaxing atmosphere then give this place a try. It was great to get away from the same old, same old, usual restaurant meals and experience something from another country. We were there for over 2 hours and didn't...

We went to Nuba on recommendation of a friend but were extremely disappointed. We walked in and stood at entrance for a few minutes while “servers” for lack of better word walked passed us. Finally I asked to have a menu and or table. I was given a “oh sorry” i was handed a drink menu my partner a dinner menu. The tall blond lady (manager ) said oh sorry ma’am here is a food menu but by the way do you have reservations? We did not so she found us an extremely small table in the darkest corner. We should have left then but did not. I complained that it was too dark snd music too loud. The very nice server (left hsnd behind her back) said she would look into it. The tall blond lady came by and actually said to me” you said the music is too loud and i was actually going to turn it up” and we do have another table (out back) my partner took a look and said it was completely not satisfactory (out back). Should have left still stayed. We ordered stuffed baked eggplant. Crispy cauliflower and prawns (6) . Food came rather quickly with a down the middle cut eggplant with the stem still on. It was “stuffed “ with green olives and tomatoes. Or at least that is what the menu said. The eggplant skin was smooth and intact the flesh white the temperature mildly warm in other words not cooked and certainly not baked! Maybe the chef was. That might not be a nice thing to say but the eggplant was just barely cooked. I looked up baking time for eggplant and it is 40 minutes we got our food in 10. The cauliflower were anything but crispy coming with a watery tahini sauce! Not hummus. And the prawns were tasteless. I asked for salt and pepper…. Not a good sign. I did notice however that all 3 young ladies that came to our table to either fill glass or take away good had left hand behind their back. I can only assume it was the over bearing manager. I suggested they change the “chef” because even when we returned the eggplant to have it baked it came back looking almost the same. I couldn’t believe that people had not complained and that was when our server said that she had heard a few other people complain in the 2 snd 1/2,weeks that she has been working there. I do not recommend this...

I am a regular Yelp contributor and thought I would share my recent experience at Nuba on this site.

Came by on a Friday night during Dine Out Vancouver in a group of four. First off, I loved the room and the ambience. Our server came by right away and took our drink orders, so off to a great start. And nice that they had a local IPA on draught.

It went downhill from there. It took a while for our server to return to take our dinner order. I opted for the trio of dips to start, with the chicken for the main and the rice pudding for dessert. The trio of dips were the star of the meal and I enjoyed all three: humus, egg plant and carrot. We were only a few minutes into our appetisers, when they brought out three of the four mains. A wee bit odd as we were all still eating our starters...and not anywhere close to finishing them. We made the most of it and the persons in our group began to eat both courses together. Unfortunately my main was not brought out. After twice enquiring on the status of my entree, the chicken was served 20 minutes later, after the rest of our group had finished their mains. No apology or explanation from the staff. The chicken was overcooked, dry and had no taste. The rice was bland and not memorable. Our desserts were brought out together (yeah) after we had to flag down a server to enquire if we could get our desserts now. Rice pudding is one of my favourite desserts but this was surprisingly also very bland. I have had good rice pudding and this rice pudding was not good.

The positives of the meal were the presentation of all three dishes and the taste of the trio of dips.

I normally do not breakdown my reviews in separate ratings, but felt compelled, to justify my 2 star rating:

Room/Ambience: 5/5 Food Presentation: 4/5 Food Taste: 1/5 Service: 1/5

With the multiple issues with the food and service, it was not a positive food experience and I can not...