AIDA cafe

Food is good, when they have it. Apparently about 50% of the menu isn’t actually available. Like no coffee. Only coke of all the soft drink. No shish-​kebab. Staff were kind of rushing but we were only in for a casual meal so didnt matter. So overall go here for a quick and tasty meal but don’t have high expectations.

Some places have their thing — this is one of them. I don’t come here for the food, I don’t come here to meet people, I come here with friends to enjoy a chilled out shisha smoke. Certainly not how I would recommend starting your night, but finishing it. Prices are perhaps a little expensive, and there are some rules I’m not a fan of, but I have never had a problem with them because the owner and I seem to have the same thing in mind — this is a shisha place!

This Hookah bar sucks. Perth needs better hookah bar. On the outside it says they open at 5 pm but he opened it at 6 pm. The way these guys do business, maybe they need to go to college and learn how business is done. I don’t think the hookah is that great considering they over charge and pack the bowl to the top till all of the shisha burns.

SHISHA at aida’s? yes they can be really annoying in rules like you must order another shisha even if you have some friends that just wants to hang about and not smoke. Their flavours are limited and the only one i recommend is watermelon because it taste nice. The price is reasonable for a Hookah shared between 2 or 3.
But I like this place, it’s great to hang out with mates, just passing the pipe around, competing with each other to see who blows the thickest and longest smoke. We’ve been going to aida lately about once a fortnight, that guava juice is something crazy and the other delicious drink was the cinnamon tea… along with the shisha… amazing!!!
Food wise we only had the falafel kebabs so far and it was delish! even though that night i had a KFC feast but my stomach made room for it. The shisha made the boys & i sit there for 4 hours just conversing, laughing, enjoying ourselves and even though it’s bad for our lungs it was fun.
(The experiences had been great for my mate and i because we kind of befriended the worker)

I love Mediterranean cuisine. Shout me some falafel and hommus and I will forever be your groupie. So when I spotted Aida’s mummies and advertisements for cheap nosh on William street, I thought to myself, how could you go wrong?
I went wrong.
Service was slow. Meals were unsatisfying. They seemed to not be familiar with gluten free requirements (standard in any hospitality establishment), and they over charged us $ 15. Just don’t visit this restaurant.

One of the few places in Perth to experience Shisha (unless you buy your own hookah), my friends and I decided to give it a go. After being given a menu of flavoured smoke choices (Strawbarry, yes, barry being the one for me) we were sharply and rudely informed we needed to at least buy a drink as well or get out… so we just got a couple of sodas.
Inhaling flavoured smoke was, well, exactly that. What could have been an enjoyable, relaxing experience with friends was awkward and short lived thanks to an empty restaurant and lingering staff watching your every move. No good.
Oh, apparently they do food too? Not really somewhere I’ll be rushing back to eat though.

From the outside, AIDA seems like an interesting restaurant — an Egyptian-​focused establishment with decent décor. The meals were on the pricey side, but some of the dishes didn’t seem to be of the kind that you would normally encounter in a typical Australian establishment.
Unfortunately, I didn’t even manage to sample the food. For some reason, AIDA is a cash-​only place, so I had to run to the nearest ATM for some money. The staff member who served us was rude and showed us to a table with sharp glare, despite the restaurant being basically empty at the time. The plates, cutlery and glasses were dirty, almost as though they had not been washed — and that was when it was decided that AIDA was not our kind of establishment.
For the prices AIDA charges for its dishes, you would expect them to at least have a semi-​decent dish washer.

Having done a food review here once, I can tell you the food is not too bad (well, wasn’t too bad back then) but pretty average in the innovation stakes. For a café/​restaurant boasting traditional Egyptian fare, and having pretty much a monopoly in this cuisine in Northbridge, I’d have expected far more exciting dishes than kebabs, kofte and dips.
And judging by the look of the décor, which looks about 3,000 years old (or as though Molly Meldrum decorated it), they may as well have gotten real mummies in to pepper the place. It really could do with a paintjob and perhaps go a little easier on the themic thing.
I believe it’s one of the few places one can go to in Perth to smoke a shisha, but at $ 25 a pop (for two), I’d strongly recommend punters take a trip to Little Lebanon in Joondanna (on Wanneroo Road) where there is excellent ambience, a spunky crowd, cool music, easy décor, and excellent food. Oh, and cheaper shisha.

For years and years me and my friends had a theory that AIDA was just a front for some underworld organised crime. There was none ever in there! We didn’t know how they made money. Well one night we desperately wanted to do Shisha and apparently this was one of the hot spots of Perth.
Again, there was none in the restaurant. But as soon as we told then we wanted to do shisha, they escorted us to this private shisha room in the back. It was so bizzaro. Down a little corridor, and into a room FULL of people puffing on some shisha. It’s pretty pricey, but it’s because they’ve got somewhat of a monopoly. A shisha for 2 was $ 25 and when you think about the fact it’s just tobacco, that’s a little asky. And a small bottle of Mt Franklin was $ 5.
Anywhoo, it was a cool experience for anyone whose tried everything else Perth has to offer. Oh, and ps they are also a restaurant?