Mantee Cafe — Restaurant in Los Angeles

Food was pretty darn good, however I have to say the service was the strangest I've ever encountered. I arrived before the rest of my party and was told the table was ready, when we got to the back of the restaurant it clearly was not. It only took a few minutes to clean and reset but they just left me standing there awkwardly. Throughout the evening there was a lot of heated discussions among the staff and it often uninterrupted our pleasant night out. I understand you're all working but some things should be talked about in back of house, not in front of patrons.

I honestly cannot tell you who our server was as literally everyone in the place, save the cook, came over and acted like our table was theirs and asked for our order. We had to tell 4 different waiters we had already placed both our wine and our main order. The other strange thing was at one point a waiter came over and asked if we wanted to see a dessert menu, we said sure, then he yelled for yet another waiter to come over and give us the menus. Okay? Its not bad or good, just very odd.

Then the owner came over and didn't introduce himself, or say anything to us at all. He was dressed in street clothes and suddenly just started moving all of our plates, glasses and silverware as far over to the side of the table as he possibly could. He even took my wine glass out of my hand and said "you'll want to be ready when the food arrives" For a split second I thought some guest was drunk and was just helping himself to our bread and wine. He then told me to put my phone away, which was sitting face down on the table (I left it out so if the other members of my party texted me asking where I was, I could respond) he then scolded me for having it out in the first place. I'm a 30yr adult having a night out, if I want to have my phone out that's my business, thank you. I also hated the fact he put his entire hand all over the top lip of my wine glass. I was drinking that and now I just have to hope this person washed their hands recently or forgo the $12 wine I just paid for. He claimed all of this was because they have so much food and he wanted the table to be clear for it. Okay fine, but please be a little more courteous about it. The ironic thing was once our food arrived, the plates were decent sized and well proportioned to the rest of the table, wine glasses and silverware all could live quite comfortably, fingerprint free.

The parking in the back was extremely tight and the back gate was left open. Makes sense to let incoming guests know where to go, except if you happen to be a seated guest you get the joys of having someone's headlights blast your face every 2 to 5min. So the atmosphere was just simply ruined. The garden could have been nice, but between the constant interruptions of the wait staff and the headlights, well I won't be returning anytime soon. If they do take out though, the food alone might be worth...

Great food, awful dining experience. Be prepared to wait over an hour for appetizers and even longer for mains (seems like many other commenters have experienced the same thing so it’s not a one off).

I’d give 3 stars if our mains had actually made it to the table. After about 1.5 hours of being at our table and only receiving our apps we asked the server if she has an ETA on our mains and she said “I wish I did but I don’t!” So we cancelled and asked for our checks. Every table around us was visibly upset also. They said they’re short staffed and overbooked. But they did nothing to make it up to guests who spent their Saturday night here. Server would vanish for long periods and then we’d have to flag her down to get her attention. Charged $14 for dolma which were 2 tiny pieces. Mantee was great but need to order 1 per person. Fattoush salad was amazing, but again small portion for $14 with no sort of protein.

For what they charge this should be a 5 star dining experience. I felt like we were in a mall food court. Owners really need to look into this. If service had matched the taste of food, I’d be telling each one of my friends to go here ASAP. Sadly, I’m now telling everyone to try take out or...

I was excited to return here with my partner on our 9 month anniversary to share food from my culture since I’m Armenian. When I booked in the morning (Saturday) on OpenTable it had availability for the whole evening so we set it to 7:30 and didn’t expect it to be very busy. Unfortunately when we got there we were mistaken. The restaurant was extremely busy and it took us around 20 minutes to be seated. I’m not sure if it was lack of staff or bad organization but it took a very long time to get our appetizers to our table. We actually had to cancel our main courses as we had eaten our appetizers over half an hour ago and had gotten full. They also had limited clean glassware and had to serve our Tan (yogurt drink) in champagne glasses. I don’t want this to be a negative review because maybe they were just overwhelmed when I visited so I recommend for others to go and make your own opinion. In regards to the actual food we loved it, all of it was delicious! I highly recommend the Mantee obviously. It was the best Mantee I’ve ever eaten (other than my mother’s of course!). We’ll return again hopefully on a less busy night to enjoy it...