Cafe Divan — Restaurant in Washington

My friends and I decided to go to this restaurant today to have dinner. The food was good but the service was terrible. Once we received our food, our server didn’t come back once to even check on us and see if everything was alright. We had to call her name several times as she was all the way at the other side of the restaurant (mind you it was not that busy). When we asked for the check we wanted her to split it into 4 so we could pay separately. She already didn’t like that but told us to mark on the receipt which orders we would each be paying for so it would be easier for her to charge separately. We did that, and when our reciepts had come back she completely mischarged us and mixed up our orders. We proceeded to let her know that she had not charged us correctly then she started arguing with us to convince us that we had not written which orders we would be paying for correctly, accusing us of messing it up. So my friend had gotten confused now and said sorry “our mistake”, although when I double checked myself we had not messed anything up on our side...we marked everything correctly between the 4 of us. As one of my friends expressed this concern the waiter decided it was a good idea to lotion her hands in the middle of the conversation as well. She then told us we should’ve told her in the beginning we wanted to split the bills, but we were not informed of this practice (as it had not been a problem before in other restaurants we’ve been to), basically putting all the blame on us. Overall the service was the worst I have ever had and for this reason I would not recommend this place. A rip off for charging “18% service fee” when clearly there was no...

We stopped by Cafe Divan the other night for dinner. The place was quite busy for a weekday evening (with rains to boot). We were seated promptly and our waiter walked us through the menu. The place looked tad bit on the smaller side, but we later discovered a room at the back - maybe for special guests or large groups. The decor and ambiance of the place is quite upscale wannabe, which is a good thing. There is open view of the kitchen area and a few of the employees even waved back as I was checking out the meat rotisserie.

We ordered the humus for appetizer which was good enough to whet our appetite.

For the main course we ordered Iskender Kebab, Lamb Shish Kebab, Baked Lamb, Hunkar Begendi. All the dishes were good and portion sizes were good too. Meat in all dishes was cooked perfectly and was tender and flavorful. The winner of the night definitely was baked lamb - only because the preparation of the eggplant that came with the dish was much better than the eggplant that came with Hunkar Begendi.

For dessert we ordered Firin Sutlac, Kunefe, Chocolate Mousse, Kazan Dibi. The chocolate mousse was good tho a tad bit to intense for me. The winner was definitely the Kunefe even though it was a bit to sweet for me.

All in all, a good place to try out Turkish/ Mediterranean food in...

Cafe Divan used to be a great place. My experience with the food, ambience and service here almost 7 years ago prompted me to find the time to stopby during a recent trip to DC. Couple of (depressing) comments are below, and I must agree I may be biased since I hoped for the magical dinner I once had at this establishment.

The ambience of the place is great if you get seated by the windows, however we were seated quite inside and particularly lacked the ambience it once boasted about. We were surrounded by a whole lot of food delivery material and not much fresh air. It was also Infront of the kitchen and smelled like used oil. Service was quite poor, with a particularly rude-to-uninterested server who hardly even filled up water and was in a hurry to get everyone ordered. The chef was kind and had a nice smile and caring attitude. The restroom at the back of the kitchen was not in proper order, and the area was filled with quite a few food delivery material There was a constant stench to the seating area, possibly due to it being so close to the kitchen. Lastly, food was mediocre- and I'm comparing them to how it once used to be. Couple of the colleagues who had Turkish food for the first time seemed to have quite...