Byblos Restaurant — Restaurant in Winchester

Just found this place today, I believe they've been open for a week or less at this point. I was super excited to see a Lebanese restaurant here in town, so we stopped by for lunch. Unfortunately, this is going to be a somewhat mixed review.

To start with the positives - the food was delicious. The menu had a lot of options, all of which sounded great, but limiting ourselves to a selection of appetizers (hummus, tabouleh, grape leaves, etc.) and two entrees (mixed kebabs, firouj mishwi) we were not disappointed with any of the dishes. We actually took the food to go (more on that below) and despite the drive home it held up pretty well and was fantastic even cooled down to room temperature and jostled in a car for 15ish minutes.

On the negative side, our experience unfortunately was marred by couple of things. I mentioned earlier Byblos has just opened very recently, and they definitely have some kinks to work out. We actually meant to dine-in for lunch, when we arrived on a Saturday around 1 it was almost completely full, but we were able to get a table for 2. It took probably 15-20 minutes before our order was taken, but the staff seemed to be a bit overwhelmed with how busy it was, so I was fully willing to exercise a heightened degree of patience and understanding given the circumstances. The problem arose when after waiting a further 30-45 minutes after ordering, we were informed that there had been an error, the order was not put in the system, and so our food was not being prepared - would we like to order now? Unfortunately, we had our 6-month old with us and it was really not feasible to wait an additional 30+ minutes at that point. She was getting pretty fussy so we realized we couldn't stay, but the waiter in addition to apologizing profusely, suggested if we would like to order take-out instead they would work on it as fast as possible. We were eventually talked into it, and to the restaurant's credit they did complete the order in under 20 minutes. Being in a hurry at that point, I didn't really inspect the order until arriving home, upon which I discovered we were given the wrong side for one entree and no side at all for the other. On the bright side, as mentioned before, the food we did get was delicious... so although we didn't actually order the rice side we received, I was glad of that error since the rice was fantastic.

I will 100% give Byblos another chance, because I feel like the negative experience was partially just bad luck and partially opening jitters. I feel somewhat overly critical giving 3 stars for service, but it was unfortunately a pretty unpleasant experience our first try. I'm giving 5 stars for the food, and 4 stars for atmosphere - there's nothing wrong with the atmosphere really, it just doesn't really have any. I'm hoping the food is consistently that good, if so I will likely be a...

We ordered food online and paid for it online and went to pick order up at designated time. The y stated the website is not working that we ordered from so the lady took a picture of our order from my phone and said our order would be ready in 15 minutes so we go outside and wait because the restaurant is very small and was very busy. We go back in to pick order up and there was two bags on counter sitting ready to go but was informed that was not our order. We wait inside at this point thinking it shouldn’t be long. During our wait we see an employee charge another customer wrong and the customer pointed it out to them and they apologize and fix it. They continue to tell us our order will be ready soon and then they are packing it up now and back to cook said few more minutes and it will be ready. The lady then comes to me with her phone and says is this your order and I was like no it isn’t and showed her our order on my phone and she then tells me our order is sitting on counter. So a half hour waiting past time for our food and you tell me it’s been sitting there this whole time but when I came in you specifically told me that was not my order. Never Again! Very disorganized and disappointing. The food is not that great either. The Sambusek was...

I placed and paid for my order online, expecting a smooth pickup. However, when I arrived, the staff had no record of my order. I was told they didn’t receive an alert because their paper printer (which prints the bills) was out of paper. This was clearly an ongoing issue, as a previous reviewer mentioned the same problem a day earlier, yet in 24 hours, they failed to fix something as simple as replacing printer paper.

Despite being assured that my order would be ready in 10 minutes, I quickly realized this was just an empty promise. There were five occupied tables, with four groups visibly still waiting for their food. This made it clear that my order hadn’t even been started and that they were struggling to keep up with existing dine-in guests. Once they finally acknowledged that my order hadn’t even been prepared, I decided to cancel it entirely.

The poor management, lack of urgency and failure to address a known issue make this place highly overrated and overhyped. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. They could have simply turned off online ordering yet they kept accepting knowing they had printing/alert issues on...