Al Qalaa is a Lebanese restaurant moments from Mornington Crescent tube station on the busy Camden High Street. Despite it's exterior aesthetics, it boasts a wonderful interior/exterior dining area that manages to evade the smoking ban and jump through all the bureaucratic loop holes to provide a dining room that is well ventilated and permits the popular middle eastern tradition of Shisha smoking.

I arrived at the restaurant at 6pm on Saturday, desperate to find a location for a large dining event I had planned for the evening (following several plan changes). The manager was first on the scene and he offered to take complete care of the evening (set menus, drinks, shisha) for a fixed price (which made splitting the bill much easier).

We had falafel, hummus, pita, salads and more for our starter. This filled the table and everyone was astounded at not only the restaurants generosity but further the quality of the food on display. Bearing in mind many of the diners that joined myself often indulge in some of the finest Lebanese restaurants London has to offer, it was a big shock when the food was so tasty. Our main courses were primarily meat based and the trend of good food continued.

The Shisha is an important aspect of any Lebanese restaurant and despite previously writing off Camden as an area for shisha we were shocked to eventual find somewhere that does reasonable shisha with proper coals and nice flavours. They also do fruit topped shisha at a fair £17 price tag.

The service was great, all the staff were friendly and helpful and I will definitely returned.

Total was £35 a head, this included all sorts and the meal went on for approximately 4 hours.

Pleasant atmosphere and food. We arrived a bit late for iftar and most of the dishes were finished and the majority were not refilled. The food did lack variety. We were served dates, juice and tea at the table. There were no desserts (like the fruits in the photos) except baklava. The interior design is impressive.