Over on east 21st, there’s a popular restaurant serving Mediterranean, French, Middle Eastern and Greek food. They can fill up quickly over lunch and dinner and are often in the discussion for best Mediterranean restaurant in Wichita. It’s time to talk Cafe Maurice on the blog.
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9747 E 21st St N
Wichita, KS 67206
316-425-5762
Monday: 11am – 8pm
Tuesday – Saturday: 11am – 9pm
Cash/Card Accepted
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If you’re interested, you can view the menu here.
A couple of friends joined me over the lunch hour at Cafe Maurice. We’ve all been here at least a couple of times so this has been a restaurant we had some familiarity with. For myself, it’s been years since my last visit so it was relatively more of a new experience.
As with any Mediterranean restaurant, we started off with an order of hummus. Since my fellow diners had limited experiences with them, I ordered the grape leaf rolls as well. Everybody enjoyed the hummus especially with their delicious pita chips. I’m sure people are going to ask, “Is this the best hummus in town?” While I would say it’s up there with the best, I’ll leave that up to you all to decide. Everybody has their own preference. We all thoroughly enjoyed our hummus so it made for a great start to the meal. Where the miss was on the starters were the grape leaves. They came out a bit dry for my preference but one of my friends really enjoyed them.
For lunch, I went with the beef kabab sandwich while my friends ordered the tilapia over lentil and the soup/salad combo with a shrimp skewer.
My friend felt the tilapia was overcooked and maybe even burned around the edges. She has gone multiple times before and always enjoyed the food so she was a bit surprised she had her first underwhelming experience. Given her past positive visits, she said she wouldn’t hold it against them. My other friend loved her soup and salad combo along with the shrimp skewer. She had no complaints about her lunch and found it all to be wonderful. My beef kabab schwarma was really tasty. Oddly enough I had most of it as leftovers and really enjoyed it. The beef along with the tahini sauce was a fantastic combo. However the fattoush salad was just swimming in homemade dressing that it made it inedible.
The silver lining there is the free tiny piece of tiramisu. It’s complimentary with every meal and so incredibly delicious.
The biggest shocker to us in our experience at Cafe Maurice was the service. We weren’t sure if our waitress was overwhelmed, busy or what but she did not seem enthused with us. It was as if we were an annoyance to her. Asking a simple question such as “What do you recommend?” or “How are the grape leaves?” brought this look to her face as if we were inconveniencing her. Simply put, she was not pleasant at all. And as my friend noted, “The service has always been great here.”
Did we catch them on an off day? Perhaps. There were some things Cafe Maurice excelled at and some they missed. Would we go again for lunch? Sure but hopefully those misses are much better the next go around.
Happy Dining,
Eddy
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