I’ve been going to Restaurant Leila at ABC Dbayye and Achrafieh for few years now and the service has been very good, yet I’ve heard some complaints from friends of mine since it relocated inside ABC Dbayyeh and I unfortunately had a bad experience myself the other day while having lunch there.

The place was not packed but the waiter just got everything wrong. Two dishes were ordered without onions came with onions all over them. The supposedly “hot bread” came cold, the olive bread they serve right at the start tasted like they were two days old. A hot dish we ordered never showed up for some reason as well. Putting those mistakes aside, the remaining dishes were still as good as they used to be.

I truly hope those mistakes are just accidental because it would be a shame to see Leila go down the same path Al Balad Restaurant took. Consistency is crucial to a restaurant’s success and it’s almost nowhere to be seen in Lebanon.