Medina — Restaurant in Washington

True to the reviews I’ve seen (both professional and on Google) and to owner Rose Previte’s reputation, this place was excellent. My wife and I showed up at 1830 and were immediately seated (though we were told we only had an hour and a half to eat before we’d have to cede the table). The servers were great, knew the menu and the composition of the cocktails and food items and what tastes they’d suit. I had a Caspian Sea (a fruit forward gin cocktail with alcoholic “caviar”) in my hands within minutes. My wife ordered the Medusa and it was amazing; I never thought air bubbles could be salty and spicy but they were. The cocktails here are super creative.

The food is also excellent; I work a lot in North Africa, and this is a great modern take on the dishes in that region. The Brik d’ouef was delicious, and the mezze is loaded with food, which is not always the case when you order mezze platters in DC. The tinned branzino was great. We were full after just the brik and the mezze; I would like to try the tajine at some point in the future, it also sounds great.

The atmosphere is fun, simulating a high end tented North African resort, essentially, or maybe a storybook idea of a Tuareg tent. It was also fun because clearly the cool kids love this place; looking around and seeing the clientele we joked that we were not cool enough to eat here. But that really is a joke because the servers were extremely welcoming, the manager dropped by and chatted, it was delightful. And this is just me, but I got to nerd out because I saw David Greene, the owner’s husband, who I’ve followed for a while in his reporting role. He was busy talking to someone so I didn’t bug him but that was cool!

My only complaint is that the website says they hold a significant number of seats for walk ins and it felt like that wasn’t actually true; the place was empty when we walked in and there was still a time limit, suggesting that they had reservations for every single table. But that’s a small quibble. Great place, worth the high prices,...

We arrived without a reservation and agreed to be placed on the list. We were told there wasn’t any room at the bar for a drink and that the wait was going to be an hour. So We went to a place next door for grab a drink. We received a waitlist text within 17 minutes of being placed on the list but didn’t see it. The text only held your place in line for 10 minutes and asked you to respond. We missed the time limit for the text but replied that we were still interested. And the text responded with a “great, see you soon.” We arrived at the restaurant to discover they removed us from the list and had to place us at the very end. From the time we walked to the time we were seated was an hour and 15 minutes. We were told there were no tables available and that we had to wait. When we are finally sat, we walk into the main area and discovered there was no less than 5 empty tables in the restaurant and no one had exited the restaurant while we waited. The host and hostess were unhelpful. Despite the wait and unhelpful hosting staff, we still spent $100, even with the drinks comped for the extended wait. The wait staff was inattentive and the food was slow to arrive. Despite the extravagant wait, the restaurant wasn’t very busy, as there was less than 8 tables overall. We had to wait 20 minutes for hummus to arrive at the table. Finally we when finished, we had to get up to ask for the check. We discovered upon receiving the bill that the restaurant puts an automatic 20%, which likely accounts for why the wait staff doesn’t care to check in on the table. Overall the food was great but the experience with the extended wait:, the slow food serve and overall poor service from the staff killed the night. I would recommend spending your...

I got invited to checkout Medina and I loved it! The space is so beautiful and unique. All of the drapery makes you think you’re farther away than D.C.

We got mocktails to drink (can’t remember the exact name but it was a raspberry drink). It was delicious and the perfect level of sweet. The mezze board wowed us. We just kept picking things off of it and eating lol. The branzino is a canned fish and was surprisingly tasty. When I think of canned fish, I definitely don’t think of that but we loved it. The mezze board comes with olives, tomato eggplant jam, housemade cheese, dates, apricots, figs, and these flavorful and really spicy peppers (loved it).

We also had the roasted beets. It wasn’t bad, but I can’t say the ingredients are one’s I like in general, so there’s that. My friend really liked it though.

Now the star of the show: the lamb tagine. It was almost like a lamb stew. So tender and delicious. Flavor on it was perfect. One thing I love about Medina is all the flavors they incorporate, like mint, citrus, tahini, etc. Literally flavor in every bite.

The service was also very good and everyone...