ilili Restaurant

This is one of the BEST Lebanese restaurants in NYC. The food is so delicious and authentic. Every bite is full of flavor and rich and satisfying! Customer service is excellent. The atmosphere is very elegant and nice. I wish I could give more than 5 starts! So good! Aldo, they great selection of Lebanese wines that are really good.

Delicious Lebanese food in the heart of New York. The restaurant is beautiful and elegant. The food is excellent. The only issue, it took them some time to bring us the menu and waiters were coming and going and not paying attention that we didn't have the menus yet. Once we ordered, they served everything pretty fast. It is also very noisy in there. But in general it was a good experience.

We dined at Ilili, and can say that the food and atmosphere definitely lived up to the hype. Unfortunately the service was less impressive. We made reservations, and arrived on time, but were made to wait in the lounge for about 10 minutes, despite the restaurant being nearly empty, as the dinner service was just starting. This was not an issue, in isolation. We were then seated, and there were a handful of other diners in our section, including atleast two we could see seated just after us. We were immediately given water, and a drink menu, but no food menu. We noticed another server quickly attend to the other tables nearby, offering recommendations, drink orders, etc. we waited another 10 minutes (20 minutes after our reservation started), and finally one of the runners inquired if we had been helped. We told him the situation, and he apologized and asked the nearby server if he could attend to us. At this point, we had looked at the menu on our phone and knew what we wanted, so we placed our order. The food arrived quickly, and was very good. Our water was quickly refilled throughout our dining by the attendant, but at no point were we ever approached by the waiter who took our order, or any other waiter. By the time we had finished, we asked the attendant who had been filling out glasses for the bill, and he went to alert our waiter. A different waiter arrived with a desert menu, and left before we could clarify we wanted the bill. He went to attend to the newly seated neighboring table. After all this we finally got his attention and he grabbed our bill. For the level of restaurant, we had much higher expectations for the service. Considering there was a 15 minute grace period for the reservation, it seemed odd we would be forced to wait for nearly 10 minutes in a mostly empty restaurant. The disorganization of the waiter situation also forced us to wait for atleast 15 minutes longer than other tables immediately next to us. I hope the service issues we had were an exception, as the food and space were exceptional, but the consistently poor service from the waiters left a bad impression on us.

Food was great! We started with spicy margaritas. Meal was several mezzes, including an unbelievable hummus and beef sausages. The duck shwarmawas good too, but the sauce a bit sweet. Would have preferred seating in the main room but I guess parties of two are not seated there :-/

We enjoyed the variety of Lebanese dishes. The branding was perfectly roasted and the brussels sprout was delicious garnished with fresh grapes and walnuts. The hostess (Jana) was super friendly. The bus boys were attentive. In comparison, our server was aloof …