Casba Mediterranean Cafe

In the heart of dirty Chinatown, this place is always kept meticulously clean. The homemade-​to-​order menu items are top-​notch in flavor. Delicious spices of Morocco are perfectly applied to chicken and beef dishes. The hummus and tabbouleh are my favorites — I often get them to-​go on Fridays for a weekend treat. They’re only open Mon-​Fri for breakfast and lunch.
I’ve been a customer for five years, and come in once a week or so. The lattes are delicious, just flavored simply with a dash of cinnamon. The Moroccan mint tea and the lentil soup are comforting on cold days. And in the summer — the iced mint tea is the best! This is truly cooking with love by the proprietor, Ahmed — a kind man. The problems of street life in Chinatown appear outside his windows and this is not a reflection on his business but on the inability of the City of Portland to come up with solutions to homelessness.

Most mild Greek food I have had. Pitas are heated, but don’t appear to be homemade. Hummus will be a necessity for adding a kick of flavor to everything.
Basamati rice is perfect in texture, but needs more spice. Even the tahini lacks kick. Maybe they were out of garlic today?
(Also, I asked for «no tomatoes, but got them anyway. Not a real conplaint, though. Service was very fast.)

The atmosphere was amazing, Very Portland. The food fantastic and ended up getting the combo appetizer. yum. Thank you to the staff who helped with my choice as I new nothing about the food. She made me feel good about my choice as i was very unsure.

Their veggie bagel with sesame seeds was off the charts delicious. Service was a bit weird. You’d think they could tell the difference between iced coffee and iced tea.
I’d go back for the bagel.

Update: Still have not gone for lunch again. My opinion of lunch stays. However I have been getting their Mediterranean Omelet and have to say it is well worth it. The flavor is good, egg is a little dried out and cooked too hot, but the over all flavor of the whole dish is good. It has the spinach, garlic, tomatoes, and avocado.

Simple, friendly, good quality food. Excellent Moroccan tea; good Shawarma; good turkey-​cheese breakfast bagel this morning. Friendly staff and a really warm, open, and colorful setting. I’ll definitely be back.

It’s a general rule of thumb that the more things a restaurant tries to do, the worse it will do any of them, and Casbah are not the exception to this particular rule. In addition to generic middle eastern options, Casbah offer up a bevy of bog-​standard lunch items. Everything I’ve partaken of from the menu is decent, but nothing has ever been what I’d call good. In a town with a different Lebanese restaurant on every block, I find it pretty hard to justify spending time at Casbah (though their hot mint tea is pretty tasty). If you end up eating lunch here, the mezza platter isn’t a bad way to go, just don’t expect the quality of any of its contents to be up to the standards set by Nicholas or any of Portland’s other better middle eastern options.

Convenience brought me to the Casba Mediterranean Café. It is right across the street from where I work. My legs will take me a bit further the next time I venture out for eats.
I hate giving this place a 2 star review as it seems everyone else has had a good experience here. It isn’t that I had a bad experience, it is that the food that I ordered was underwhelming. I had the Shawarma platter which had beef as its meat. It came with rice and a yogurt (?) sauce. The meat and the rice were dry. I felt like I was dehydrated by the time I finished the meal.
There is far better Mediterranean food in this town so I’m not sure I feel the need to come back here again even though it is a hop, skip and a jump from my office.

This clean café is a very practical lunch option. They serve Illy coffee along with their Mediterranean menu, but provide some very American options in the form of various sandwiches.
I got the shawarma sandwich. The meat was a little dry, but the rest of the filling was really good. I also got some Moroccan iced tea (think sweet tea with mint). They had a lot of Mediterranean desserts in the display and I’d go back for a casual sit down lunch.

lamb kabob plate yum yum yum

I also work near Casba and am also there on average 4 times/​week. It’s twisted I know, but there’s something really appealing about this place. You always know what you’re going to get. The service is a touch slow, but their friendliness more than makes up for it.

This is a good Old Town lunch spot. The food is very fresh. I am a big fan of their hummus and tabbouleh salad. The breakfast omelets are super tasty and great care is taken in preparation. As someone mentioned, their egg bagels are yum yum. A couple of their lunch specials and some of their salads are just average but consistently fresh and straight forward. Id say that overall Casba is much better than anything in the immediate area for a quick breakfast or lunch. The staff are hardworking and very friendly.

They serve Ice Cream right next to the espresso machine! And the daily special is actually reasonably priced, unlike some places. They also have stuff already prepared for a quick bite.

Working next to Casba I find myself there at least twice a week. Their food, from the daily special to bagels to salads and true Mediterranean dishes you can’t go wrong! I personally adore their egg bagels (bagel with omelet) and chef salad. If you’re looking for a quick bite, this is not the place! Or, call ahead like I do. They take great care in preparing your food, be prepared to wait 15 minutes or so for your lunch. I believe Casba is closed on the weekends.

I’ve only been here a couple times, but I can already tell the local business lunch crowd loves this place. So do I. The sandwiches are wholesome, hearty, and large enough to fit inside any respectable stomach; few things I hate more when I eat out are those crackpot owners and cooks who think quality entails Gerber-​sized portioning. This isn’t France! The hummus and baba ghanouj are both very tasty, and you can actually taste the cucumber in the tzatziki sauce. Not only that, but the rice is nice and fluffy, like a little cloud lazing a balmy Summer afternoon away in the upper troposphere. Don’t forget to wash it all down with some Moroccan iced tea, which has that mint flavor I’ve come to know and love.