ala | Bethesda — Restaurant in Bethesda

Oh, I so wanted to love Ala! We were all looking forward to it. Everyone in our party of four had such high expectations.

First of all, the quality of cooking was top notch! Nothing to fault at all with how the food was prepared. Their kitchen obviously works to very high standards.

The question then is, why?

For example, why take standard humus and 'get creative' with it by adding cranberry sauce on top? I love humus and I love cranberry sauce. That match was not made in heaven. I am fine with being creative, as long as there is some point to it.

The salad appetizer, with a kind of radicchio (sp?) and pomegranate was absolutely wonderful, perfect, excellent! It was the best thing I had the whole evening. I would go back there to just eat a couple of those salads. 😋

Of all the cold and hot mezes ın the menu, there was only one (1) which was not marked as either V or VEGAN. I am an ardent carnivore and avoider of chlorophyll, and can live with that. After all, I was not expecting a kebab house.

The mixed mezes we had (cacık, baba ganush, mashed squash dip, and the aforementioned cranberry humus) were ok, but not earth shattering. (Oh, will no one bring me some Çerkes tavuğu, Arnavut ciğeri, sigara boreği, lahana dolması... :-)

Of the four separate entrees, I had the Denver steak which was good. The mousakka was acceptable, the levrek itself (lying on a smear of some sort of mash) was reported to be quite good (kudos to whoever deboned it!) and the Adana looked and smelled delicious! (I think I would have preferred the Adana over the Denver. The quote at our table was "Adana çok güzel!" which is something not often heard! 🤣)

The jeweled rice needs improvement. It wants more dill, black pepper, diced apricot. The jewels were not really coming through for us.

For desert, the künefe was composed of too much cheese rolled in not enough kadayıf, and certainly not enough syrup. Its architecture was a good idea, making it a roll, like a sausage, so it was easy to cut into pieces and to share. But it needed less cheese, more syrup.

Sumac ice cream with pişmaniye on top? Again, why? What's the chef doing, trying to show off?

I wanted to order unsweetened Turkish coffee - into which I would normally put a bit of saccharin (sweet & low, in pink packets - not yellow, not blue, not green - pink!) - which they did not have, so I skipped coffee.

The owners have interior design credentials, and the tables were nicely separated, with ample space around them! We really liked that. The lighting seemed darker than necessary - easily adjustable. Sound level was good, conversation at the table was easy. Chairs were comfortable, table sizes were good.

The service was quite good, especially for the second night after opening. Everyone there were quite friendly.

Look, I am biased in several ways. I know and love Turkish cuisine. Plus I loved and dearly miss Positano. (Ala thankfully has preserved the vines outside! 👍)

Many of the things that annoy me about living in Bethesda, the general pretensiousness of the population, their need to show off, the going out of the box just to show you have done so, are all amplified here. Thus, I expect (and hope) Ala will have enormous success, and I wish them well.

If you are not a Turkish cuisine connosieur, go to Ala. I am sure you will like, perhaps even love it.

I will continue going to Kazan for my...

TLDR: The food was slightly above average, but the service was subpar.

When we made the reservation, we wanted 11 or 11:30AM, but only 12PM was available so we settled for that. I assumed based on the available times, the restaurant must be very busy for brunch.

Upon arrival, the restaurant was nearly empty. There were maybe 3 other parties there. I didn't understand why we couldn't have made an earlier reservation.

When we sat down, the waitress informed us that drinks were included because we were a "large group". I was a little confused and wanted clarification, so I asked if it was included in the $36 bottomless brunch. The waitress said that the $36 bottomless plates and $12 bottomless drinks are bundled when you have a large group. This was not noted anywhere on their menu or website (at least not obviously, I even double checked before writing this review) and I would also not count 5 people as a large group. It just felt strange and made us all feel a little uncomfortable.

When we finished our first plates, we waited a long time for our waitress to come back even though there were 4-5 other parties at the restaurant. We had to ask another waiter to take our order and she FINALLY comes up behind him when she realized what was happening. Then she talks to him for a minute or so after we got our order down with him and comes back to us to "check our orders". It just felt sloppy to not check on a table more often if this is a timed bottomless brunch. Then, the restaurant was very strict about the 2 hour time limit even though there were very few parties in the restaurant and we were done eating and just chatting. She checked on us and told us we had 20 minutes left on our reservation and then when the 2 hours was up, she immediately brought our check over to tell us we were done. The hostesses and waiters all seem friendly and they say hello, but the practices seem more shady than anything.

As for the food, the dips lacked flavor and the crab omelette was heavily seasoned with Old Bay, which didn't feel like it fit the overall food profile. The short rib gyro was decent, but nothing too special. I would say the fall latke was actually the best and most unique thing I ate there. I wish I had ordered it sooner so I could've enjoyed more of it. Though the food was okay, I wouldn't come back anytime soon for $48 +tax bottomless food/drink again. The friend who recommended the place liked dinner there so maybe that would be a...

We enjoyed one of the best meals we have ever eaten in Bethesda in all the 34 years we've lived here. If you love food prepared from scratch from the freshest ingredients, food beautifully plated, and served by warm, informative wait staff AND you have not yet tried ala, head there now!

We happened to be there during DC's Restaurant Week. We were offered the regular and the DCRW menus. So many enticing dishes! We settled on the four-course DCRW menu which started with four generous servings of the signature spreads, a large bowl of pickled veg, olives, and sundried tomato strips. We would never have ordered the pickles on our own, but they were a revelation as were the olives that came with.

Next came the Mucver Fritters—surprisingly light mix of thinly threaded veg puffed into a fritter—and Batata Hara, heavenly pillows of potato slices with a delicious, crispy crust served over the amazing house-made harissa. For mains, we ordered Adana Kebab and Garides Soujok. The kebab was juicy, delicious, and surprisingly spicy. The piquancy was balanced by the smooth and cool labneh served alongside. The Garides (shrimp) were very tasty, lightly spicy, and plentiful.

We almost asked our server Usain to box up dessert, because we were feeling pretty full. He looked so downcast we changed our minds and enjoyed our desserts at his table: Antep Baklava and Zalabia—wonderfully light balls of fried dough served over a remarkable house-made cream cheese.

Speaking of Usain, his service was delightful. His advice on ordering was excellent, his stories of the origins of the dishes were enlightening and entertaining, and he managed our table brilliantly. The opening dishes were served with two pita which we finished before we had eaten all of the spreads and pickles. Usain came to the table and said he could bring us more pita, but he advised against it because he didn’t want us not to be able to enjoy all the rest of the food to come. Great advice, that! We were lucky to have arrived at ala relatively early and were able to have more of Usain’s attention that would have been the case during peak...