Awtar

The food is amazing and their Shisha is the best. I would extremely recommend it.

After being urged by a family friend to attend one of these Lebanese style parties, with a singer/​mixer and tabil (big drum) and a preset menu, I figured I would give it a shot as there are slim pickings here in Calgary for a good Lebanese night out.
Atmosphere:
The place is located in da hood, Compton, the Projects of Calgary, in a sketchy area off of 17^th Ave in a plaza behind a plaza; I walked a lot quicker into the restaurant than I would have if the location were anywhere else. Double-​checked if my car was locked.
You would never think this restaurant was a Lebanese restaurant, nothing, nadda to indicate this place is the next premier Lebanese «go to» place. No pics of any sort hung up, no artifacts, no cedar trees or Lebanese flag anywhere. If you swapped the Leb food with Phở, you wouldn’t know that it was a Lebanese restaurant.
In a corner after you first enter there was a group of «gentlemen» sizing up everyone that walked in, all were smoking shisha’s and seemed to know the owner. Bouncers?
There is a stage at the front of the house with a projection screen… dinner theatre perhaps?
The food:
The food we had was prepared very well, but portion sizes were comical for a preset menu at $ 50 a head, I would have rather ordered off the menu and got what I wanted.
The apps were very well executed, the hummus and mahamarra were divine, but portion to share was quite small.
We were only offered one salad option while the preset stated 2, which could have been the waitresses fault because it was her first day — or the kitchens fault, either way I didn’t mention anything because the place is fairly new and I was not interested in any confrontation with the group of guys in the corner.
Chicken skewer was divine, but no garlic sauce came with it, booo. The lamb was not my thing so I didn’t touch it, I thought I could swap out for beef, the waitress said she would ask, and never confirmed.
Asked for pop and was told it did not come included in the preset, and they came out in cans, no straws, or cups of ice, cans.
Entertainment:
Shisha’s were excellent, but my hose kept falling out, I mentioned it to the waitress but never saw her again after the music started.
Singer got on at around 10:30 right around the time we were going to leave, we were there at 7, so to wait 3.5 hours to get entertainment is unacceptable. 9:00 would have been suitable, as some people have children to attend to and leaving this restaurant after midnight in the location it is, is scary as fuck, take my word on it.
Good musician though, and DJ, but some of the requests he played were circa 1990, tabil for dabke was good as well but the space is small and the table set up make it difficult to get a full circle going.
Waitress came back to bill us for the pop and shisha’s and were over charged, considering that we were nickel and dimed on the pop and missing components of the meal and my hose kept falling out, they would have at least comped a small portion, NOPE!
I don’t think I will go back, maybe if it was early in the day and I was in the area I would pop in for lunch, but that’s it.
Not worth it for a preset menu party, portions were small and entertainment started too late. I’ll give Awtar a pass at 2.5.