Abu Maher Restaurant — Restaurant in London

Local Syrian restaurant at the market. The food feels very homy and comforting. Baba ganoush is excellent and so is kefta. However, portions are a little small and prices are quite high even for London.

Upd: after getting food here about 4 times and it being consistently pretty good, unfortunately had a pretty unpleasant experience with Abu Maher last week. We called to order take away and some lady replied to our call and took our order. Upon arriving to the restaurant 40 minutes later, we were greated by Abu Maher himself, who told us that he no longer accepts take aways and the woman who replied to our call should not have accepted our request. After that he said that despite this he will make us food. We therefore assumed that he already started preparing the food since they did accept the order on the phone. A couple of minutes later we asked how long more it will take just to make sure (its been about 50 minutes since we ordered at that point) and he said it would take 15 more minutes so we again assumed food was already being prepared and continued waiting. After another 20 minutes of waiting we politely asked again about the food, to which Abu Maher seemed to be irritated and replied that it would take about 10 minutes and we can do what we want including leaving, at which point we agreed to just leave without the food. Very disappointed to be treated like this.

My rating:...

Hidden within the Queensway market is this very authentic Syrian restaurant with home made Syrian food. I've tried a few Syrian restaurants both in the Middle East and in London. These rich, fresh, made to order, flavours in Queensway are as close to the Middle Eastern experience that I've been able to find in London. There are a few other good Middle Eastern restaurants in London offering this cuisine however this place is worth seeking out as it takes top place for quality to price. The service is top as you are made to feel like family when you arrive ... It's not a silver service, it's a family service. The owner would be happy to chat to you (as he did some other guests) but also recognises if you would prefer to have privacy. An example of why it felt this way was that I was allowed to help myself to drinks from the fridge and then let him know what I've taken rather than have to wait to order, I was able to let them know any changes to the menu that would suit me as well and make my experience more bespoke to diet, hunger or taste. You can tell even the dips appear to be freshly made. Its not a romantic ambience due to its location within a unit but it is away from the hustle and bustle. The place seems very clean. Whilst there I saw other local staff choosing it as their go to restaurant. This is a local gem which I will most definitely visit again. Less than...

A HUGE disappointment, we started by standing near the counter for at least 10 minutes just looking/ waiting around for someone to take our order bc there appeared to be no one. To our surprise the gentleman that got up to take our order was actually sitting amongst customers that appeared to be his visitors. When he got up he told us there were two other customers waiting to order before us. He told us to take a seat and he would get to us shortly. He proceeded to take the other customers orders and then he sat back down with his visitors. We waited for approximately 20 minutes before I went up there again at which point he got up again to take our order. We placed our order and immediately he sat back down with his visitors. Then shortly he LEFT the restaurant with his visitors. We waited for another 20 minutes for him to come back at which point we were very frustrated and absolutely starving now that we wasted almost an hour. We left to get food somewhere else. The customer service was terrible despite the overwhelming positive reviews. We didn't even...