Samaan Restaurant — Restaurant in Cambridge

My friend and I visited this restaurant on the 13th April. And what an absolute pleasant experience it was. I was absolutley shocked to find out it had only been opened for 10 days. The interior is absolutley stunning, with traditional pieces decorating the entire restaurant. It screams upmarket. The restaurant has comfortable seating and has placed all their furniture so that it has ease of access. They have seating both ground floor and underground. We were seated on the ground floor.

Moving onto the important part: the food! Delicious succulent meats, flavourful rices and salad accompanied by a HUGE naan. They have the portion sizes absolutley spot on and you even have enough for lunch the next day. My partner and I can eat A LOT but even we were stumped by the portions. My partner had a mix kebab that could easily feed two and I got the mixed shwarma. Chicken wings, kebab, ribs, shwarma and two types of rice. The meats were succulent and cooked to perfection. Beautiful chargrilled taste and piping hot.

Service was brilliant, staff attentive to orders and customer needs. All smartly dressed and overall very friendly.

We paid just under £30 and what an absolute steal that was. You get what you pay for, excellent service, huge portions of delicious food and a beautiful restaurant. I have experience in new restaurants and food and therefore was pleasantly suprised. I was watching carefully once the waiter had told me they had been open for 10 days and everything flowed beautifully.

We will definetly be...

The food was decent enough. We tend to dine out a lot and therfore comparing against some very good Turkish restaurants, and this just doesn't stack up. The grill is cooked well, but the flavour profile is weak.

The service was very poor. The waitress serving us had a chip on her shoulder. We were a large group, and maybe that put her off, but then again, if you can't handle a large group, then just turn us away. It's pretty simple.

We had two tables, and when the starters were coming out, we asked them to be distributed between the two tables. Politely, I should note. However, the waitress turned around and said, 'pass them back to the other table, it's not hard, I'll show you'. Are you serious? I asked. The starters are not at the table yet, and you're still bringing them out, so wouldn't it be easier for you to place them appropriately? Cue the rude eye roll.

We debated on whether to pay the service charge onfme the £400+ bill, but the other server was actually good (guy is cap), so we didn't want to take anything away from him.

So, a meal out ruined by the rude waitress. If you don't like serving customers, then just find a new job. Why be miserable and pass that...

Very much a hit and miss experience. I've dined in Samaan in the past and it's been excellent all round with fresh food and attentive and speedy service. This year, the service has been terrible with the male waiters (on both occasions), coming across as lazy, inattentive and rude. On one occasion the waiter had to be informed the manager(?) to acknowledge us and take our order and then spent the rest of the evening, sniffing and sneezing around the area, grossing out the customers instead of taking himself out of sight and attending to his hay fever/cold.

The most recent occasion was also disappointing as once again the service was poor and the male waiter was rude and inattentive, and to add insult to injury, at the end of the evening, we were charged a service fee which we only noticed when it was too late.

The food itself is lovely, although the portions do seem a little stingy of late and the man who offered me a bag to take away the remainder of my food was kind (shame he wasn't the one waiting on customers). The seating could also be spaced out a little more, or at least don't seat customers so close...