Enjoyable dinner with combination of flavors I never thought I would like.
Financial transaction was muddled in the restaurant's favor and never straightened out to my satisfaction. Service should be streamlined - too many servers are covering too many bases.

We have dined at Tawla a good number of times. We always order more food than we can eat mostly because we enjoy the fresh baked bread. Some of the dishes are excellent others not so much.

The wine list is utterly stupid. Too many bottles at >$200 too many at >$100 and far too few at <$70. So, in a practical sense, the wine list is useless with little to choose from. There are so many excellent wines in the world for <$70 that Tawla should offer many more. If you have a palette that can discern the quality of a $250 bottle of wine, maybe this is the place for you...

Good food and restaurant. Thought that waiting staff try to over sell you on food and drink to juice up your bill

Greaaaat food. Staff sooooo rude:(

This was our first time here, and we were very pleasantly surprised. The food was really quite unique and tasted amazing. The portions looked small initially but the food just kept coming and we all left very full. The bread was especially good, freshly made and delicious.

Tawla is good. Food is good

Family Easter brunch 🐣

Food not great.. very lackluster. Main dish too salty to eat. One of the worst meals I've had in the mission district in quite some time.

Other than that, the service and ambiance are great.

Great addition to the SF dining scene. Have eaten here 3 times and always delicious. Great servers and really nice thst they receive good benefits from the owner (who is usually there).

Great waitress. Yummy creative Mediterranean food.

I honestly do not know where to start on this review, every single second we spend in Tawla was sublime. The food, the service, ambiance - everything was worthy of 5 stars.

I visited last Saturday night with 5 colleagues (all from London), we were running late for our reservation but that didn't stop the wonderful servers being absolutely perfect that evening.
We opted for the Tawla feast (so much divine bread!) on each course were were brought on a culinary journey like none we've had before, the wine list is fantastic, the restaurant itself is authentic and comfortable, suitable for pretty much any occasion.

If you are looking for delicious, comfort style food thats been elevated to a whole new level, servers that will make you feel welcome, an amazing wine list, wonderful ambience on your next meal out then look no further than Tawla - I urge you to check this place out!

Thank you to everyone who was involved in making our evening so wonderful, next time Im back in San Francisco Tawla will be the first place I visit xxx

Enjoyed our meal at Tawla, but over-ordered at the direction of our server. It became an expensive evening.

Overpriced mediocre food and generally kind but not very savvy servers. Fixed price course menu promoted as “all the bread you want.” Should not be selling point for $59/person meal. Worst dining experience in recent memory.

We ordered the feast and the food was all very good, and service attentive if not spectacular. However, for the prices charged ($69 each for feast + mandatory 20%), I would have expected something memorable, which Tawla was not.

Fantastic food and service. Very unusual dishes. It reminded us of our trip to Istanbul. I don’t know of any other place like this in the city.

Food was as good as when it opened. Waitress was super rude from the get go. It was really bad. Clearly she did not want to be here, and made sure this was clear to us.

So bad that I'm not sure I would repeat, even though the food was great.

Very different experience than when it opened. The owner/chef, who grew up in Palestine, was super nice.

Great food and great service

With surprising flavors, local ingredients, and perfectly salted + seasoned dishes, it is really hard to find any single snippet to describe what is hands down my favorite go-to restaurant in SF. This is not your Americanized Mediterranean affair with hummus + gyros. I eat here rather regularly with my girlfriend and there are always dishes moving in and out of the menu as the best ingredients are sourced. There is always return for a new favorite flavor.

TL;DR - You must try Tawla as often as time permits.

The food was very bad. Greasy, salty, all dishes were “off”. The concept is good but execution is not even close to authentic. The wine list is decent but on the expensive side. The service was very good; accommodating and professional. They even removed all food charges because we didn’t eat any of the dishes. They need a different approach to executing that great idea.

I am a huge fan of Tawla and look forward to each visit here. The food is truly unique relative to that of other high end Mediterranean/Middle Eastern restaurants and strikes the right balance of blending tradition and innovation. While many places pay lip service to seasonality, Tawla's kitchen clearly puts a great deal of thought and effort into making creative and delicious seasonal changes to its menu (while keeping many of its craveable staple dishes in its lineup). Having eaten here more than any other restaurant in San Francisco, I can't really think of a dish that I didn't enjoy. I'd also add that the tasting menus are a real value in comparison to those of other high quality restaurants in the Bay Area.

Like the food, the wine list is fantastic and evolves relatively frequently. The pairings are fun, and I also appreciate the restaurant's flexible corkage policy.

In terms of service, the staff is refreshingly attentive, friendly, and knowledgeable. Whether I've come alone or in a large group, they've always been very accommodating with respect to special requests/dietary restrictions.

Overall, it is impossible to go wrong here - this place is the real deal.

Well done decor for a casual restaurant and the food was absolutely delicious. However, the service was below average and the pricing seemed to be erratic. There are better Mediterranean restaurants at a similar price point in the area.

We really did not enjoy eating here. We ordered the Teta tasting menu which included many interesting dishes that just failed to offer much taste or balance. At one point, we had 3-4 dishes on the table that all tasted overly sour. Even the labneh was more sour than at other restaurants. Seemed overpriced for the quality of the food and service. The waitress didn’t even cordially greet us, just rudely asked what we wanted. I will not eat here again.

My second time at Tawla. The food was excellent, and I look forward to returning. However, our service was some of the worst I've ever had anywhere in San Francisco - it was truly awful.

Our server came over for our order after about 30 seconds of us arriving and since we were clearly not ready to order (had barely taken our coats off), he left and did not return for about 20 minutes, despite the restaurant being slow that night and us trying to flag him down several times. While we were ordering, he interrupted us more than once. We asked about the sparkling wine promotion from OpenTable, and he snubbed us and told us we would each have to order an entree, which he then told us were each enough for three people....he didn't seem to understand the promotion and was quite rude about it.

The same experience happened again during dessert. We waited over 15 minutes to order dessert, and once we were clearly finished with our dish, we waited another 20 minutes just to ask for the bill. We had to get up from our table and ask another server to bring us the bill.

The food is excellent, but the server completely ruined our experience.

Terrible service. 20% gratuity added on your bill automatically. Mediocre food. Would not recommend.

The food was excellent but the service was an issue. Specifically, our primary server was creepy and awkward. Every interaction with him was challenging as he either wouldn't engage or would simply walk away before we could ask for anything. He also reached across my wife several times rather than reaching for things from behind. This person either needs more training or needs to find a job outside of the restaurant industry.

Unfortunately the entire experience was not nearly as good as our first visit. Most likely won't return.

Food was generally delicious but the service was shockingly bad.
Our waiter was totally unhelpful when we were ordering wine. It's fine for him not to know every wine by heart, but rather than asking a colleague for advice for us we ended up having to look up the wine characteristics online. He just said "I don't know" and looked at us when we asked for advice.
He also forgot to put through our two main dishes, which meant we were sat waiting for food for ages after the bread and dips, and he actually had the nerve to come over and ask if we wanted anything else! When we pointed out we were missing two large parts of the meal he said "Oh yeah they are just coming" and disappeared. 25 min later and the chicken STILL hadn't arrived (we'd been in the restaurant for an hour by that point), so we ended up telling him to just cancel the order and bring the bill (20% service charge included by the way, which is insulting).
He also was totally slow at filling wine glasses from the bottles we had chilling... We were literally sat with no food and empty glasses for 20 mins at the end of the meal, with wine still sitting in our bottle in the fridge.
Total joke.

We had 5 people so we had to do the fixed menu. The plates came in family style which was fine but they came in with odd numbers for 5 people to share. For example: one dish was a meatball and it came on a plate of 4... so one person had to share the meatball with someone else....? There were other dishes came with off numbers as well. I wouldn’t go back with a big party.

OMG! Thank you Tawla. What a great dining experience my best friend and I had. This was Friday night after thanksgiving (so they were not busy). Sat the two of us on the back patio at a table for 6, under beautiful hanging lights. We had the ‘Teta’s Table’ tasting menu. For $49 per person, what a deal! You get to try almost everything on the menu and it was ALL delicious, and we couldn’t finish it all. My favorites were the delicata squash, the fattoush salad, and this baked crab and feta dish. I was so impressed, go to Tawla asap. (And I don’t give reviews like this often!)

It was an awesome culinary experience and loved it all. We stuffed ourselves silly. The wine recommendation was excellent as well.

One of the worst dining experiences I’ve had
Squid was spicy; only jalapeños were tasted and burnt everything else. Mushrooms too citric and one dimensional, feta cheese was extremely salty. Meatballs were good but drowned in lemon juice and slices. Not worth the time or money.

Please bring back original
Samakeh Harrah! The new one does not compare to the original. The original was incredibly good!!

Tawla has great food and a diverse and creative menu. The service is very hit or miss - some servers are knowledgeable and friendly, but many can't properly explain the dishes and are impatient and not friendly. Unfortunate negative side-effect of including 20% service automatically on the bill...

quality food, but very flat/non-distinct flavoring. very over-priced though...food wasn't satisfying in flavor for the cost

Great service, unusual food, very small portions. Some food was excellent, others too "cute" for my taste. We went early so it was quiet. Later in the evening is quite noisy.

It took nearly an hour for any food to arrive at our table, which was a bit frustrating. But once it arrived it was outstanding.

Nice place with a bit of intimacy and ambiance complimented by a delightful menu of unexpected Mediterranean fare. Good wine list, casual and friendly service that doesn't rush you out the door.

It was my wife's birthday and we had a great time. The service, the food, the unique environment were all very enjoyable.

Exceptional food featuring a fusion of Lebanese, Turkish, and Moroccan flavors - this restaurant gets the closest I've ever seen to nailing the flavors of some of my favorite Lebanese dishes as a child growing up in Beirut. But all of its modernized with fresh, local ingredients. The restaurant is also just beautiful and inviting.

Great spot for a inner with friends. Delicious food. Loved the tasting menu.