Ristorante Libanese - Gibran — Restaurant in Venice

Delicious Food. Lovley Atmosphere even though my experience was ruined. Questionable service and amenities.

I have mixed feelings about this restaurant. I took my wife here for a wedding anniversary dinner. I chose this place because it was one of the only Halal options for a sit down meal in Venice.

The food was delicious, sorry I forgot all the dish names. We ordered fried diced potato starter dish, some meat dish cooked in Aubergine served with rice and a mixed grill platter for one. The meat/aubergine/rice dish definitely stole the show, it was exceptionally tasty, so tasty that I now need to learn how to cook this. The Salad that accompanied the mixed grill was also amazing. One of the best salads I've ever had! Presentation was really good too. I couldn't give the food 5* because I was pretty disappointed with the size of the mixed grill. 3 tiny skewers of meat, this felt more like a child's portion for 22 Euros, I did feel a bit cheated there.

The decor was lovely and with the Arab music it had a lovely ambience until it was spoiled by an alarm from the till receipt roll running out. This alarm continued for a full 5+ minutes while I witnessed staff run out of the restaurant who returned with the replacement stationary supplies. I felt I was getting a headache after having to endure that terrible alarm, it certainly spoiled my experience. I believe that this issue was also the initial cause of the slow service and could have been avoided with better preparation of having a spare till roll at hand. The toilets were not lit properly and full of mosquitos. Maybe it's normal in Italy, but there was no toilet seat either. I would certainly expect to see one in a sit down restaurant charging these prices.

The service was slow, a couple were finalising their bill before we ordered and another 2 ladies ordered on a table outside while we were halfway through eating, So it wasn't particularly busy at the time, but it still didn't't feel very hospitable. After paying, the waitress struggled to understand if the bill was paid or not because the receipt confirmed my home currency as well the amount in Euros. We had to wait for her to call somebody to confirm that the full amount was paid. I wouldn't normally mind waiting for this but as we were about to miss the last tram out of Venice and the restaurant is a good half an hour walk to the station, it gave us unnecessary stress and because the slow service and this additional delay we had to run just after eating a meal to catch the last transport for the night. It was completely unnecessary as the receipt confirmed payment in both currencies.

To conclude, I did enjoy my meal but it was far from a good experience. I hope the restaurant can fix these issues and it certainly has the potential to be one of the best...

We were looking for a sit down halal restaurant and came across this one and decided to try this out. We ordered some grilled veal plate, kefta plate and chicken makluba, along with a potato starter and labanese bread with minced beef. Food tasted great, especially the makluba and kofta plate. Veal sticks tasted okay. I really enjoyed the starters, bread had a nice well seasoned beef filling. Overall tasted great, Couple of things that took away the good food experience, first the lady who was the server didn’t seem very friendly, slightly annoyed looking at us entering the restaurant since she was sitting outside enjoying the weather I guess lol. I wanted to think it was because of the language barrier but I did see her talking relatively nicely to other people who were not brown :) serving size was very small considering a very high price tag, makluba had very few pieces of chicken. The bottled drinks were three times the price of what you would pay at a store. A sparkling orange soda was €6.5, which I thought was outrageous especially when you order like 5 drinks for a whole family. They also charged us €15 for sitting down at the restaurant which we did see in some of the restaurants in Italy but not all of them. Anyways friendliness and portion sizes, relative to the prices can be improved and it will be a pretty good food option, especially people looking...

Tourist trap and very low standard Lebanese food - beware

Restaurant has a nice interior but was a very disappointing experience, felt ripped off because:

Starter vine leaves were from a tin, I eat those regularly at home. Hummus was bland, also tasted a bit like tinned hummus but can't be sure. Rice and fish dish consisted of bland, overcooked rice with a white fish with bones mashed into it, and no other ingredients. Stuffed zucchini dish had a not very nice tasting meat filling and an overly salty sauce. Lebanese mint & cinnamon tea didn't taste as good as we're used to and we were charged £9.50 for a larger size pot, total rip off. Ordered alcohol-free beer, asked for the 0.33l one, was told he only had the more expensive 0.5l one in, but then was served a beer in what looked like a 0.33l glass (without the bottle) and charged £4.50 for the larger size beer.

We love Lebanese food and this is the worst either of us has ever eaten, the chef here cannot cook. And given the way we were served we felt like these ploys to increase the bill were quite cynical, targeting tourists. If you'd like a friendly and warm dining experience with well-cooked middle Eastern food I would recommend Orient Experience...