Phoenicia Restaurant Detroit

After wanting to try Phoenicia for quite some time, my husband & daughter took me there for dinner on Mother's Day. While the food was tasty, it was not all that different from many other Middle Eastern restaurants we've dined with in the past. The only thing that really stood out were the prices. Maybe it's location in Birmingham allows Phoenicia to charge twice as much as the average restaurant for the same quality of food. Our bill for three people (without drinks) was $185. If we are splurging for a nice dinner out, I want it to feel as though we've had something special. While the restaurant is lovely, it is rather small and crowded. We were seated very close to a large party on one side and a table of four, loud children on another. I'm not sure why a nice restaurant allowed four kids (three of which were very young) to sit at a table without adult supervision, but it definitely affected our experience. One very positive thing about our experience was the Hummus & Hashwi. This dish was new to us and stood out from the otherwise tasty, but ordinary dinner.

The rice pudding and baklava are great, the bronzini fish amazing and the mushroom pepper medley is awesome. The place looks great and the server was superb. I did not like the stuffed cabbage and grape leaves much and the prices are definitely high, but the food I had and service deserve the 5 star.

The workers were not friendly. Can’t even make kibbeh. Not only did my tiny kibbeh lack flavor on every aspect, it didn’t even have a filling! How can you mess this up? When you bite kibbeh your are supposed to taste the new flavors of the spiced beef with pine nuts, onion, and maybe even a hint of pomegranate molasses. Literally search “inside of a kibee” and you would find this out. How do you mess up the most basic thing? I tasted the same flavor in a bland ball. The outer shell is supposed to be different than the meat inside. Your supposed to get new flavors. What a shame to call it middle eastern food and i’m not even Lebanese. The other things we ordered were a disappointment too. Tasteless. It’s fine if the food is inauthentic and extremely below average, but the fact that it’s coming from a restaurant with the title “gourmet” thinking it’s good and being overpriced for literally nothing, the worst food. Can’t even make the basic foods!

My wife, myself and our other 2 guest were a little put off to begin with because of how long we had to wait for our table even though we showed up on time for our reservation and people with the same reservation time and same party size were still sat before us but came way after us to check in(I’ve never understood restaurant seating arrangements). After finally being sat we were greeted by Hussein who was to be our server. Hussein did a phenomenal job in helping us order and make recommendations so we could try everything on the menu. The food was really good but the standouts for me were the Kafta, Hummus, Steak and Baklava. The ultimate standout was the chocolate cake which was next level. As someone who loves chocolate cake, this is by far the best I’ve had at a restaurant. I would definitely recommend trying this restaurant and my wife and I will be back in the future.