Casbah Cafe

i ordered through eat 24 and even if the app cooed the food, i would still be disappointed in the quality! Fries were stale and you could taste either some preservative or som chemical. bread was terrible! salad was nothing to write home about! i ordered a $ 24 lunch and could tolerate at most 4 bites. worst meal ever possibly! don’t waste your money.

Good hh. Fun staff. Nice neighborhood vibe. Getting silly with the staff is a plus.

My take out order was not the best. Salads were not very fresh, fries tasted stale like they had been sitting around for a long time. Hummus was ok and bread was stiff. It’s hard to judge a place based on one order but considering everything I ordered failed to meet my standards this will be my first and last time.

I came here on a Sunday afternoon, roughly 2pm. The menu looked interesting and I had heard good things about the food from friends. I sadly never got to try the food because I walked into a completely empty restaurant. Not so much as a server wiping down a table or the errant crew member peeking out of the semi open kitchen in the back. I gave up after about 5 – 10 minutes of peering around the vacant host stand and walked out. Shame.

i have been going here for years and one thing I know is that if the main owner and his wife are not around the place has suffered. When they are around it fully rates the four stars for food and value, although can’t argue with comments about the décor. Lamb sausages and tagine are great and they make the best bahklava in the city! The prices are more than reasonable and you can always find parking within 100 yards. I would say about 80 percent of the people I have taken there love it.

If you were not looking for Casbah Café, you probably would not notice it. Overshadowed by the neighboring Ledo Pizza which with it shares a dining room, you may step in and try and walk back out, thinking you were mistaken. But don’t, as Casbah Café is actually a little nugget of simple, good food in the often stuffy and overpriced Georgetown area.
The menu is simple and follows the classic Moroocan and Mediterranean restaurant fare. During my visit, my boyfriend and I ordered some falafel for an appetizer and I got the Chicken Tarboush for my entrée — chicken shawarma with tomato and onion served with rice and hummus. The falafel were okay, but nothing special. They didn’t seem home made. My Chicken Tarboush however was very good. The chicken shwarma was cut thin and was tasty and well seasoned. Combing bite after bite with the tart tomato, onion, and creamy, cool hummus was something I could probably do all day. Those pieces combined with the crisp flatbread served with the entrees made for a filling and delicious meal.
As I mentioned before, Casbah Café does not draw attention to itself. It shares a dining room with the Ledo Pizza and you will easily walk right by not giving it a second thought. Inside, you won’t find any atmosphere or romantic, cozy dining rooms but instead a big, open, generic space of tables and booths. The night I went, it was empty apart from one other table so service was nice and fast. As for value, my Tarboush ran $ 11 which was a steal for the amount of food I got.
So what made Casbah Café stand out? It’s not a fancy experience, superb service, or even exceptional food, but how honest a restaurant it was. Casbah Café is not trying to be a luxury or cutting edge place. Instead, it serves simple, good food at a great price.

Clean, friendly service, big portions of delicious food at a good price. I enjoyed lentil soup and a lamb and couscous dish. The lamb was so tender I didn’t even need a knife. If you’re looking for frills you’re in the wrong place, but if you’re looking for good food, step right in.

Slow service and cold food. I really dont think i will ever go there again

Very friendly service! The pita bread is fresh and delicious. We enjoyed the gyros and souvalki. Great atmosphere and family friendly. More info/​review with picture of outside,
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The mezze platter (#3) was excellent — well presented and delicious. Sandwiches were so-​so, with the «lamb gyro» presenting like mystery meat. You get what you pay for.
The family-​friendly atmosphere was nice, although all the families were getting pizza.

I hate to do this but I was lured here by the decent reviews on Unilocal and the last thing this place can be described as is «decent». Really it’s just plain terrible. The service is fine but the food was awful — probably the worst meal I have ever had in DC. I ordered the chicken tajeen which is supposed to have dates (missing) and apricots (missing) chicken — way over cooked and dried out, rice — very dried out. I was really looking forward to a good tajeen, but this was not it. My friend ordered the lamb souvlaki sandwich — it had been wrapped in paper and microwaved and the paper was stuck to the pita. Obviously it had been made earlier, way earlier … Perhaps in another century. I just felt sad when I walked out and $ 45.00 poorer for the crappiest food I have had in a long time. Also, the décor is more Ledo’s than Casbah. Go here for the pizza if you dare, but if you are looking for Mediterranean go somewhere else.

— Friendly service
— pretty spacious inside of the restaurant.
— I saw interesting item on the menu ‘Fried calamari sandwich’. Because of sauces and toppings, calamari got soggy fairly quickly. Not bad but it wasn’t memorable.
— Fries: OK. not as good as other burger places.
Maybe I try something else next time.

Had the living social delivery deal $ 1 for $ 10, asked to pick up at 5:30.
Got there wednesday at 5 ish and ate there. while watching Italian soccer.
The gyro salad with Honey Dijon was delicious, thicker than commercial frozen meat, did not look like it was hand carved from a big cone of meat. Very fresh greens with olives and feta.

Moretti Rossa, a dopplebock was quite a surprise, note, Star hill winter bock on tap,
Bartender gave me a sample, EVEN poured out a couple oz to clean the lines, WOW… This is the ONLY place other than the black squirrel who thinks to clean out the line.
People were parked across wisc ave, signs did not prohibit it,
But the machine would not take money.
And, went to redeem my other deal at the nearby liquor store.

The Mediterranean menu here is very good with some of the most flavorful dishes in Georgetown. I had a tilapia dish that was cooked and seasoned to almost perfection, and I can’t wait to go back to try more dishes. Also, the entrees here are very reasonably priced and portions tend to be on the larger side.
However, this place has an identity crisis. Upon entering, you would think that it is a cheesy Italian place, with the red and white table cloths and paintings that are more suited for a pizzeria. The décor is definitely subpar. Also, it doesn’t help that this place is empty for most of the time.
Service could also be a bit better. Although the waiters and waitresses seem attentive to servers, they don’t communicate well.

sooo… i asked if they deliver to glover park. i spoke very clearly to the guy with whom i was on the phone with, but he had not one iota about glover park was, even after giving him my addy. ok then. after four or so rounds of annoying questions (where is that? what? where?), a female comes on the phone. her english was a bit better. i give her my address. she said they would order here if my order was ‘big’… i guess an $ 18 order was big enough for them. after placing my order and giving them my address, i proceed to pay with my credit/​debit card over the phone.
then she asks me for my security number on the back of my card. a restaurant has NEVER asked me for this before and i’ve ordered food quite a bit.
i’ve been told that if people want to steal, they’ll do it without the security code – according to me, it has to at least make theft an easier objective. so, no go, no thanks, what a bummer. next time i’ll have cash and update this review if everything delivery– and food-​wise goes without a hitch.

Wow, underwhelmed. Yeah, I’m that girl, I’m THAT review that didn’t give Casbah Café five stars. Slow service in an empty restaurant, results in a docked star. When we were given service, it was by a very timid but friendly waiter. Friendly is a plus! Over cooked chicken shwarma, another star docked. Although prices here were pretty moderate for a restaurant of its kind, my chicken shwarma combo sure as heck did not taste like more than $ 7. Like I said, underwhelmed. Just not impressed. Not exactly getting the big deal here. I’ll give them this though: They know how to make some killer hummus and tahini!
Perhaps next time I wander this far off M St. and am not worried about metered parking, I would be more than willing to give the ma second chance. I want to be part of the «in crowd» here, too!

A little more love for the Casbah!
True, it looks like the dining hall in a nursing home (fake plants, tacky booths) and true, it’s a little strange that the vast majority of folks in there on a Saturday night will be Georgetown students eating pizza from Lido (next door), but it’s also true that their Mediterranean food is surprisingly good and surprisingly affordable (as an aside, you might also be the only person in Casbah ordering from the Mediterranean menu — it seems most of their business is pizza).
Last night I had the mezze sampler — spanakopita, grape leaves, tzatziki, and baba ghanoush, and it was better than similar dishes at most every other Mediterranean joint i’ve been to in town (including Lebanese Taverna and Café Olé). Last time, the chicken tagine was better than a similar dish across the street (at Café Divan) and almost as good as the best one I’ve had in town (Mama Ayesha’s). If you can get past the tacky ambience and the nursing home vibe, you’re in for a real treat here — we had a fantastic meal for two for $ 24.

I love their lentil soup. For $ 4, it comes with big bowl of soup and freshly toasted pita-​like bread.
By far, it is the best lentil soup ever. Right texture and flavor for me. It has bits of carrots, onion, spinach and tomato. Having carrots in lentil soup seemed odd at first, but it turned out to be perfect.
Their sweets are awesome, too.

This place is awesome. Great food, our server was very helpful, and they were playing futbol on the tele.
Free refills on the pita bread, which went great with our appetizer of hummus, baba ganoush, this other bean dip, and one more sauce that slips my mind at the moment. I’ll be going back real soon, that’s for sure.

In my experience in DC thus far I have noticed that there is a plethora of culturally fused restaurants. I really enjoy how obvious it is. I have been to a Japanese-​Spanish fusion place (see Zengo) and the Casbah is overtly a Moroccan-​Greek spot. Literally, half the menu is greek and the other half is Moroccan. What a fantastic blend.
The service is very warm and the food is completely authentic. We started with a few appetizers including some delicious hummus, a shrimp dish, and an eggplant dish. All of them were perfect. I got a Moroccan Lamb dish that was deliciously complimented with apricots and served on the bone, and I finished it with the BEST baklava that I have EVER tasted.
The food quality and service is far beyond that of a café, but the feel of the place is so casual it just has to be called one. This place can easily take you to a café on the Mediterranean in seconds flat.
I feel 100% confident that this café is one of the best Mediterranean food places in Georgetown… I went there with 2 generations of Middle Eastern people!