DC Cafe

Are you downtown? Want a cheap late bite to eat?
DC Café is a great choice. Among Dupont’s selection of food chains and fancy eateries, DC Café offers quick Greek meals at an affordable price. It’s in a tight space and a little run down, but the food is good without all the pretentiousness and price tag that is Dupont Circle. The owner, Ayam, is always down to chat. They have some small tables and chairs both outside and inside.
I ordered just the baklava and it was delicious. Their pastry is injected with either rose water or rose essence and the fragrance is lovely. Ayam is awesome and I’ll be back for more food!

I LOVE this place! Everything is fresh and oh so yummy. Yesterday, I had a lunch special with chicken and lamb, saffron rice, peppers, hummus, salad and pita bread. Every morsel was super tasty. Gobbled it all up in no time. Planning my next visit already
My only wish is that they would deliver to the Petworth/​Columbia Heights neighborhood. Sigh…

Went with coworkers for lunch and feel in love with the place. I had the best gyro (lamb) and falafels ever! I could/​did eat that yogurt sauce (taziki I think) by the spoonful. I will definitely be back soon.

Can I say, OMG!!! Love the owner, Ayman!!! I felt at home in the family kitchen! I was sooooo full!!! The food is addictive. I want another order of the lamb and yogurt! With the fresh made pita bread! All I needed was a hookah and a bunch of pillows to take a nap afterwards!

If you like Gyros and just great food in general check this place out.
I stopped in this place on the late night because my passenger told me that he knew a good place to get something to eat and asked me do I like gyros.
I hadn’t had a gyros since the days of the Old Georgetown back in the day so I said, cool I’ll try one. Since then, I have been back times to get another gyro or try something else.
I just took my brother to get one today. We ate it at the restaurant and talked to the owner while we was eating. He’s a very nice guy and makes a hell of a gyro. After we left and got halfway through the parkway my brother asked me to take him back to get another one to take home to eat later tonight.
Just go see for yourself, great food and a nice owner.

Best gyro on earth. That’s all there is to say. Accept no substitutes. I thought all gyros were pretty similar and then I came here once about 10 years ago and now I never miss this spot when I’m in DC. The taste is on another level.

DELICIOUS! Love the gyros! The owner is so kind! It’s a great place to stop for a late night eat

If you are craving Mediterranean food… this is the place to try! The hummus is like homemade and delicious. The Falafel is a great choice too. All in all you get a lot of tasty food for a small price. Will be going back for more! Friendly service too!

Great food, great staff, great service. Food and atmosphere feel homemade. Love tiny little shops like these way more than franchise restaurants.

Easily the best gyro I have had in DC. How did I not know this place existed! I’ve had the chicken and regular gyros. Both are incredible. The «spicy» version has some heat, but not overpowering. The baklava was excellent as well. Definitely worth a stop for lunch or after-​bar.

We were staying just down the street at the Fairfax Hotel and DC Café was recommended to us by the staff. It’s definitely a hole-​in-​the-​wall type of place but in my opinion has the best chicken gyro I’ve ever had. The chicken was spicy and the tatziki sauce was so good. We also had the hummus with pita which was delicious. We liked it so much we went back for a second visit on another night. Definitely recommend this place!

Very casual hole in the wall place, a lot of food for your money! The gyro meat was chunky and tender, delicious. Fries were also excellent! I loved that there was plenty of outdoor seating.

I had a long day of traveling and was starving when I got to DC just before midnight. Luckily, DC Café was open late and it was right around the corner from my hotel. I got the hummus with lamb and it was so good! I probably should not have eaten that much right before bed (it was a bit greasy), but I couldn’t stop. The lamb was flavorful and tender and the pita was toasted and everything with the hummus was just too good for me to stop eating.

The Backstreet Boys ate here! What else do I have to say?
But seriously, the chicken gyro is super big and super good!
The place doesn’t have great décor, but who cares? Food is still really good.

Falafel sandwich — had some amazing flavors/​spices I’ve never experienced in a falafel before — delicious. Too heavy on the onions for my pallete, and $ 9 felt a bit pricey for the small sandwich, but perhaps that’s going rate around dupont circle these days. Falafels were also greasy, but delicious.

If it wasn’t midnight I wouldn’t have stayed here. I love med style food and have been to all sorts of places.
This café looks to have had it’s big day in the 90s and they haven’t updated. Or cleaned up since then.
The food was ok but man the walls, floors, ceiling, whole place is so old and sad. I just hoped there was still spirit in the food. Again it was ok.
All they need is a shot of new energy, a deep scrub down and bright shiny place and people and boom they will get the celebrities again that seem to cherish so much by the looks of all the old photos on the walls.

Food, hours, price, service: 5 stars
Interior/​décor: not too pretty but not awful either.
The rundown: stumbled on this place at 2am. Smelled great when we walked in. The owner was friendly and prompt. We ordered shawarma, fries, kibbeh, kefta kabob pita and some baklava. STRAIGHT EVERYTHING was delicious. Generous servings and really reasonable prices. The place isn’t pretty, fine, ok, are you over it yet?
Dinner for 2 at 2am including drinks and dessert for $ 26=perfect. Not to mention our meals both included hummus, tabbouleh, garlic dip and chili paste on the plate. Bonus points for eating here instead of fast food or greasy sad pizza slices.
So stop freaking out about the décor guys. It’s a lack of décor, really. Consider it charming and thank your stars he hasn’t raised his prices way up to finance the $ 100k remodel some of y’all are hollering for. Eat and be merry :)

Honestly, this place is pretty gross.
I don’t have a very discerning palette when it comes to late night food and I am pretty forgiving, but honestly, this place was terrible.
I made a pit stop here one night while I was visiting DC. I was by no means drunk, but geez, I can tell that DC Café builds its success on very, very drunken people. My sister and I ordered a maza platter which includes lamb, one chicken shawerma, some falafel patties, hummus, etc. All the fixings to a Mediterranean dish. And we also threw in a chicken shawerna entrée for good measure.
We carried it back to our our hotel room, anticipating a good late night meal judging from the hordes of people gathered at the restaurant. It. Was. All. So. Gross. Everything tasted awful. Slightly cold, slightly stale– I felt like I paid someone to reheat a frozen entrée for me except they did a terrible job of cooking it. Gross. Absolutely gross. The hummus was runny as with the cucumber yogurt sauce. It blew my mind that people actually ordered and ate this stuff because it was TERRIBLE.
I still can’t get over how bad it was. And it wasn’t cheap. Geez. Do yourself a favor and don’t come here. Unless you like paying money for bad food.

Pros: good food, reasonable prices
Cons: horrible, HORRIFYING interior
My husband and I visited DC Café recently. I’m glad we had read the Unilocal Reviews beforehand otherwise we would have turned around and left immediately. The interior is THAT bad. Dirty, dated, exposed wires, mildly smoky, a burned smell and a dull greasy film almost everywhere. We decided to take our order to go because there was no way in h*‘ll we were going to eat in that atmosphere.
The food was great. We each ordered the falafel sampler and homemade baklava. Our order was under $ 25. We each got four falafel on top of a well dressed and tasty salad. It came with tzatsiki and hummus with pita bread for dipping. It was very good. Very, very good. As good as the falafel, salad and dips were, the baklava was even better. I loved it. It is quite possibly the best baklava I’ve ever had.
If I only had to review the interior, the rating would be one star and that would be a stretch. It’s that bad. The food definitely redeems DC Café and ranks four stars. If I could rate just the baklava, it would definitely be five stars leaving me wishing I could give it more stars.

A little run down and dilapidated, probably working off of the same menu the restaurant had 20 years ago, and… great. This is exactly the kind of place that locals go to twice a week and hope that tourists never discover.
It’s pretty straight forward, come here for chicken or lamb with rice, or a sandwich of some kind. Gyros tastes great, mostly thanks to their excellent yogurt and hot sauce combination. Chicken shawarma and rice seems to be the most popular dish, everyone was getting it and it smelled amazing.
Good sides, good prices, good portions, great place. If you’re in DuPont or at the Phillips and looking for a quick sandwich you’re remiss to eat anywhere else.