Damascus — Restaurant in North Island

Some delicious mezzeh, some total fails in the kitchen, details below. About 30 min for food to show up on a full house (it's alright). Disappointingly, carbs are hard to find on this menu. You'll be full on meat and veggies lathered in fats, don't go there for a filling meal or when hungry. This is more of a place you go to taste nice things for leisure with no expectations of being nourished or full for more than an hour, it's fancy aperitif food, so manage your expectations. A nice generous basket of breads served by default (not a pita to order as a side!) at every table would really be appreciated!

SHAMANDER FATTOUSH: 4.5 out of 5, delicious sliced beetroot with roasted walnuts and cream or tahini. Really loved it but the deep fried pita in it was a bit burnt and tasted yuck. Very recommended otherwise! Will order again with a request to not burn the pita crumbs.

PATATA THOUM: 2.5 our of 5, Just thick deep fried sliced potatoes, while refreshing style of chips, it came with a strange fluffy dip and sprinkled with zaatar spice mix. Nice texture but too sour and "garliyucky". Not recommended. Will not order again.

ADDAS: 3 out 5. I would give this a 7 out of 5 if the lentils were actually cooked. They were below al-dente and very floury, not a fan of that texture at all. Really loved the perfectly executed flavour of fried onion. Not recommended. Would order again only if they can properly cook those lentils.

TOTAL DISASTERS:

WITLOOF/ENDIVES WITH SOMETHING ON IT (name?): 0 out of 5, a hungry dog wouldn't touch this. I normally absolutely LOVE witloof/endives, but it was bitter as hell and they hadn't de-bittered it with lemon juice and oil. The mash that was served on top had a disgusting bitter overdose of uncooked cumin. That was my first ever bite at Damascus and I was shocked with a face of total disgust for a solid 20 seconds. The runny sauce that dripped on my fingers didn't help. Vile, all the way. Absolutely not recommended. Please fix this! I did tell the staff but I regret I didn't send it back. Vile, vile, vile dish!

BBQ LAMB CHOP: 1 out of 5. That was a special. Just yuck. The lamb chop was full of blubber, with a tiny square of very chewy meat. It was served with what looks like a prunes and quince sauce (which I am very familiar with, it's classic in Arab cuisine) but it was very poorly executed and tasted gross. The quince still had its hard seeds in it (you can't do that!). Not recommended at all. Please fix this!

OVERALL Friendly, helpful staff. Venue alright. Food is a Russian roulette and very hit and miss, which I suspect is because of kitchen staff not versed in Middle-eastern cuisine. Will come again, after having had a filling dinner, with much less enthusiasm and excitement than the first time, but still curious and open to try the dishes I haven't tried yet. I would love for this restaurant to fix to pick up its socks and fix food issues easy to solve. I can only wish the very best of success to a restaurant owned by a Syrian after all that Westerners committed...

Atmosphere was good. Staff were good. But that is where it stops, the food was mediocre. Had the hummus, the portion was tiny and the flavour of the meat was horrible, the meat tasted off and has reminance of spam taste, obela hummus or any off the shelf hummus would do a better job.

The meat portions are extremly small for the price.

The lamb tasted bad, no flavour but was edible.

The chicken tasted good with the garlic however 3 out of 4 of the group hated it.

The kunafeh was a total joke, presentation is on point as per the pictures, but if I had a chain saw I it would not have helped to cut the portions. Ended up consuming it for the sake that we paid deerly for a single slice where I would of made a much tastier one at home by googling how to do it. Just stay away from this kunafeh so horrible.

Chicken was ok Karak tea was good Lamb horrible Hummus is bad Kunafeh abhorrent would not give it to a dog. Price was horrendous over $180 for 4 people and no drinks either, we ended up getting sals after as it was not filling at all.

This was my first time and definetly my last time, not that the restaurant would care if I come back or not.

Adding to the review after their response.

We did not keep ordering food as you say, that is not correct, we thought for a good review might as well try the dessert so at least something would make it move to two stars but that failed as well, unfortunatly that failed misreably. As I said before the service and people are great but the food was lacking heavily, long story short thats for the experience but we wont be coming back....

Luckily, the food was really good here, although the patata bravas dish was deep fried instead of roasted and was way too oily. However, the rest of the experience wasn't so great.

The restaurant has no noise baffles, so is incredibly noisy and we could hardly hear each other. For that reason alone I'd never go to Damascus again.

We had been seated a full half an hour before anyone came near us - not even to ask us first up if we wanted drinks. And there was no apology offered for leaving us waiting. Once we ordered, the food didn't take long to arrive, but our drinks came another whole 20 minutes later. (It was simply impossible to catch anyone's eye before that. It seemed that the waiting staff were doing their best to ignore people).

The waiting staff was grim faced and leaned all over us when serving from the end of the table, regardless of who they were passing the food or drink to. Didn't seem to have even any basic serving training.

We were told towards finishing our meals that our reserved time had run out, which would have been fine if we hadn't been kept waiting so long in the first place. Pretty on the nose.

All up, not somewhere you'd go if you want good value or good service, or even a...