Looking for the best restaurants in Damascus means choosing between two places: the capital itself, where the table runs from a converted Ottoman house to a neighbourhood counter, and the countryside that rings it, where people go for terraces and grilled meat. Here are six addresses, three in the city and three in its surroundings.
The best restaurants in Damascus itself
Umm Sharif
Umm Sharif sits inside the Four Seasons, the best-known hotel in the capital, on the bank of the Barada. It specialises in Lebanese cooking and serves a menu of classic eastern Mediterranean dishes.
The setting is formal and polished throughout. The kitchen covers a range of eastern Mediterranean food, but the heart of the menu is traditional Lebanese cooking, with the promise of flavours most people have not tasted in a long time.
Alongside the main dining room, Umm Sharif has a cafe open all day and a separate section for seafood.
Eating here is a trip to Lebanon in the middle of Damascus: if you cannot get to Beirut, you can at least taste it in the city.
Beit Sitti
Beit Sitti is in the heart of Old Damascus, in a traditional Damascene house that has kept its original detail and now works as a restaurant.
As the name (“my grandmother’s house”) suggests, Beit Sitti is known for its heritage feel and for food and surroundings that lean on nostalgia, with the kitchen’s standing promise to put grandmothers’ cooking back on the table.
The menu covers most eastern Mediterranean dishes along with familiar Western ones, but what sets the place apart are the small concerts it holds regularly, with a group of musicians and performers and a good deal of participation from the room, which makes for a genuinely cheerful evening.
A meal at Beit Sitti in the middle of the old city is worth building into a visit.
Al-Mukhtar
Jazmatiya Street runs through the well-known Midan quarter of Damascus. It is a crowded street given over to restaurants and sweet shops: dozens of places, many of them specialists, plus Damascene pastry shops that are hard to walk past.
The best known of them is Al-Mukhtar, which serves the traditional Damascene dish qashsha. You will see young people competing to try the qashsha and the sujuk, especially in cold weather, and there are usually a few foreign visitors among the customers, given how widely known the place is.
Restaurants in the Damascus countryside
Abu Wahid Darwisha
The best-known restaurant in the Damascus countryside, and one most residents and visitors have memories of. Abu Wahid Darwisha is in Rabwa, on the bank of the Barada, at a point where the valley narrows a little and the setting is at its best.
It is known for local dishes, above all grilled meat in all its forms, plus the grilled kibbeh that is particularly good here.
The atmosphere is easy and the summer evenings on the riverbank are the draw. For years it has been a favourite for the traditional Friday outing, or for takriza, the meal on the last days of Shaaban before the fasting month begins.
Eating at Abu Wahid Darwisha is a trip into Syrian memory, and a good tour of its grills.
The Swiss House
The Swiss House is at Yaafour in the Damascus countryside, an area known for its setting and for the number of villas and rest houses in it.
It was built in traditional Swiss style, with local Damascene touches, and its particular quality is the way it runs into the landscape: trees and small lakes scattered through the outdoor seating, so that it genuinely feels like a visit to the Swiss countryside.
The menu matches the building. It carries a long list of Swiss dishes and unusual starters alongside long-established Syrian plates — a striking mix of west and east on Damascene ground.
There is also a dedicated space for children, so the youngest guests have somewhere of their own. A meal at the Swiss House brings a touch of the Alps within reach of the hills around Damascus.
Al-Tilal, Saidnaya
Al-Tilal is in the town of Saidnaya, about 20 km from Damascus. Despite the bad reputation attached to the name Saidnaya, the town remains one of the oldest and finest in the Damascus countryside: alongside its sights and its historic monasteries and churches, it has a number of very good restaurants, of which Al-Tilal is probably the most important.
The restaurant has several attractive terraces looking out over the Damascus countryside, and a long menu of local dishes — grilled meats and raw kibbeh first of all, plus good starters.
Al-Tilal is a stop worth making on any trip into the countryside around the capital. And to eat in Damascus without sitting down at all, look instead at street food in Damascus.
