Kasbah

by Ryan C.

I'm a regular here. Every month my buddies and I stop in for drinks and hookah. Only recently, within the past 3 weeks did I have a nasty experience.My friends and I stopped in on a Friday night after having dinner with friends and requested a booth. We sat down and informed the waitress that we were going to have drinks and partake in a hookah. I have done this many many times. The waitress flat out said "No, you have to get food". We amused her and got 4 orders of Tapas ($20.00). We order a pitcher of sangria ($25.00) and a hookah ($20.00). For the non-mathematically inclined the bill, so far totaled $65.00 without tip. After two hours of the waitress uncomfortably supervising us, for what reason I have no idea, she then rudely informs us that we need to order more food and more drinks. At this point we paid our bill and left.I have never felt so uncomfortable in a lounge before. The wait staff made my friends and I feel unwelcome and that our money was no good. I felt as though my friends and I were talked down to and supervised for no good reason. The atmosphere used to be lovely and welcoming but because of this experience I will consider other lounges in the future. Such a shame too, this place used to be great.Go here if you want a rude wait-staff, uncomfortable / unnecessary supervision and the most pronounced feeling of un-welcomeness.

by Joanna K.

I love their lamb with couscous and raisins and all that jazz. Look around the menu for it - it's seriously the best thing on their menu.Kasbah is ALWAYS empty whenever I go... and the waitstaff is always new, and they're always training someone new whenever I go. And service is always substandard.But whatevs, give me wispy curtains, velvet cushioned chairs, some drinks (Kasbah's one of the few restaurants in Winthrop with a liquor license), and a belly dancer who looks... uncomfortable whenever she's dancing! Score! Oh yeah, and hookah. Gotta love the hookah. My friends and I usually leave the place laughing hysterically - whether because of the drinks, the belly dancing girl, or the copious amounts of hookah, or the mixture of all of the above?? :)

by Boston S.

Fun atmosphere, good sangria and courteous staff, but the food is pretty bad. Best to go to the Kasbah for drinks and entertainment. The "coq au vin" we ordered was cubed supermarket chicken breasts in a slightly burnt sauce. Another appetizer was still partially frozen and we also got this pita thingy with feta that reminded me of something put together by a 10-year old emptying the fridge after school.

by Rajiv R.

Located in Winchester MA, Kashbah is one of two popular Morrocan restaurants in the Boston area. I have made two visits there, so far. The restaurant offers live entertainment with a singer who croons Egyptian tunes and is ably assisted by a skilled viola player. There is also the trademark Moroccan belly dancing and good Moroccan food.The decor is decent except for the glaring red paint on the walls, which is a bit gaudy for my taste. On both my visits I had the Mosaic plate appetizer. It is good. Among the other dishes I tried are the Bastilla, a chicken dish served with almonds and the Kashbah burger. While the dishes were good, the service leaves a lot for improvement.

by Julie R.

This place is OK. I wanted to try something different for dinner and saw this place which looked cool and had belly dancing on Fridays so we made a trip. I went on a Friday night and the place was pretty empty. They have a menu with tapas and then Moroccan traditional dishes. They do a tapas deal with four for $16.95 or most are priced $5.50 each. My boyfriend decided to do that and got the calamari, garlic shrimp, Moroccan cigar, and Mediterranean meatballs. They took a while to come out but were very good. The Moroccan cigar was my favorite. Before the tapas, the pita and oil brought to the table is excellent and kind of an appetizer in itself. I decided to get the Tagine Djaj (Morocco's world famous dish) It was beef braised with olives, onions, preserved lemon, in a ginger saffron sauce topped with fries. The sauce was tasty but the beef was extremely fatty. There wasn't much meat to consume. I couldn't really enjoy it and mentioned it to the manager who nicely apologized and and took it off the bill while offering to make something else. We had been in there for a while, waiting for the food so I passed on a new entree. Also my fries were the frozen crinkle cut fries. I was very turned off by that as it looked like a kids meal and not what I would of expected for an authentic dish at a Moroccan place. I suggested to the manager not using them for his dishes. Even normal flat fries would of been OK but the Mc Cain crinkle cut is not the way to go. In the end with the manager being accommodating, I would go back for the tapas. The sangria was excellent and served in a very large glass.

by Erin J.

Okay...I'm basing my review on a very weird night that happened during the end of summer.  It basically started with a visiting friend from Florida, and his old-college buddy who is now an undertaker, and driving in a hearse, to meet her friend at Kasbah.  Like I said - weird.  We didn't eat anything so I have no comments on the food, but we did partake in the hookahs (if I remember correctly...peach-flavored?), drank lots of sangria, and took tons of smoky pics with the resident belly-dancer.  It was an all too fun, totally bizarre night.  I feel like if I went back to Kasbah in the daytime my experience would not be anywhere close to the dark velvet-covered images in my mind.

by nathalie m.

Someone else here wrote about the staff forcing you to order food and I've had the same experience. I went in with a group of friends who wanted to order drinks and they told us we had to order food. We didn't want food, but they insisted we had to get it even though the place was EMPTY, like it almost always is. I can't believe they seriously turn business away when there isn't another person in the whole place. We ended up just leaving because the entire staff was staring us down and making us so uncomfortable.On another occasion I went with friends for sangria and dessert. (I'll give them one thing, the sangria is good, but it's also kind of expensive.) Anyway, my friend tried to ask for the dessert menu and the waitress turned around and walked away. Then the live band started up and was so loud that my friends and I actually had to just give up on having a conversation because we were straining our vocal chords trying to talk over the music. We ordered chocolate fondue, which turned out to be cold Hershey's syrup in a bowl with random fruit and weird cookies as opposed to the cake pieces listed on the menu. In summary, this place is just ... strange. It's no rarity for the staff to be rude and/or make you uncomfortable. It's almost always empty, it's not cheap and the music is way too loud. Food takes forever even though you're the only person in the restaurant and when it arrives there's a decent chance it'll be questionable. The only reason to ever go to the Kasbah is the convenience if you don't want to go out of Winthrop, and even then I speak for myself and everyone I know when I say that you'll just wish you spent the extra 10 minutes driving somewhere worth your time and money.

by Julia F.

I went here on a Friday night with my aunts for dinner. We were the only people there, yet our food seemed to take forever. I got a couscous plate, which was good - amazingly hot (temperature wise) and took a million years to get to the table. My aunts had several of the tapas - it seems the way to go, they got there before we were about to chomp our arms off. The hummus plate is really good. They give you bread for the table while you wait. The tapas I tasted were really good. The food is a little pricey, but it's a nice atmosphere, with all the curtains and dim lighting. We continued to be the only customers (though the waitress stayed inattentive?) until we were about to leave well past 9pm. There was a band setting up next to the fully stocked bar (must go back and try drinks...) it looked like it was about to get alot more exciting there...

by Bridget C.

Now I have only been there once but it was GREAT!!! I loved it! We got this app. that had all this different stuff on it! IT WAS GREAT. We had a bottle of red wine with it that was great. Then for dessert we had the moroccon crepes and they were so good! There was a great belly dancer and musicians who play arabic songs on request! My girlfriend I went with is Egyptian and requested a song and sang along when they played it! All in all great night! I am totally going back!  I loved it! And the staff was GREAT!

by Maureen H.

I'm usually doing something else in Winthrop so I have yet to have dinner here; I've only popped in for drinks or appetizers kind of late a few times, but I hope to have a complete meal some time.  My favorite appetizer is the Bastilla:  Chicken, eggs, onions, crushed almonds and orange blossom water baked in a flaky filo dough pie topped with powdered sugar and organic cinnamon for about $12.  Small if you share it with someone, about 5 inches in diameter circle,  but wonderful and perfect if you aren't really, really hungry but just want to sample something.This is my kind of place.  Dark red walls and ceiling with lots of middle eastern lanterns suspended from the ceiling, colorful carpets and brassy things all over, candles on the tables.  The place is full of laughing people of all different ages and ethnicities.  I guess it would be different on a slow night, but it's always vibrating with life when I've gone.   Everyone just seems to be having fun.  Sometimes there's a belly dancer, but last night there was a man singing provocative Arabic music.  I'm not crazy about synthesizer, but he had a beautiful voice and that dominated, not the synth.  Fun just to sit back and feel the good vibes on many levels.