Restaurants Near and Middle East cuisine Cyprus

Formerly a small café for hookah-loving Middle Eastern spies, this club has become the benchmark for Lebanese and Syrian cuisine in Cyprus. Frequented by English-speaking expatriates, a few tourists and Nicosian families, the place is huge, a little kitsch and very green. Efficient and friendly, the staff serve up an impressive mezze menu with tabbouleh, shish taouk, kebab, fattouche salad, hummus, cheese rolls, lamb chop, eggplant caviar and mahalepi for dessert, all at incredible speed.

This restaurant, founded in 1975, is pretty good. It boasts a terrace with a beautiful view of the Lala-Mustafa-Pacha mosque. The set menu is copious: a wide assortment of mezzés, grilled meats, salad and dessert. But if you choose the à la carte menu (seafood, fish, wines, craft beers...), it's really more expensive. Efficient staff. Reservations recommended in high season. FYI, Aspava stands for Allah Sağlık Para Aşk Versin Amin ("May God give you health, money, love, Amen").

This "authentic Armenian restaurant" (Άβο Αυθεντική Αρμένικη Κουζίνα/Avo Afthentiki Armeniki Kouzina, Avo's Armenian Food) is in fact a fast-food joint: here we serve lahmajoun, the oriental "pizza" rolled with lamb meat that's swallowed in three bites. For a complete meal, try the souvlaki with lightly spiced meat served in a thin pita with parsley and tomatoes. Souvlaki is available for one or two people. It's fresh, and really inexpensive!

Chicha, thé tea, and mezzé in this authentic Lebanese restaurant. After shisha, you can take a tabbouleh or a delicious fatoush salad with toasté bread or a taouk shish. Shawarma at 9,50 €. Shisha (apple and grape molasses) at 8 € and 12 € to the fresh apple. It is better not to be hurried because the service is a little long. Some evenings, belly dance show. For info, the hotel rents a few rooms and has a small annexe 100% shisha at the corner of Solonous and Sokratous streets.

This is Nicosia-Nord's busiest café-restaurant. And with good reason: it's located in the courtyard of the delightful "grand caravanserai", the Büyük Han. The cuisine served here is fairly honest Middle Eastern: mezze, Turkish or Cypriot ravioli, bulgur "sausages", badadez köftesi (phyllo rolls with meat or potatoes), chicken kebabs, bureks and more. Drinks: ayran (fermented milk), Turkish beers, lemonade, tea, coffee... Very pleasant in the morning, before the mass arrival of tourists.