Cedars Mediterranean Restaurant

Tastes just like the food I’ve had in the Middle East, and I’ve been to Turkey, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Egypt.

Really great food and friendly staff!!! Very relaxed place.

Went for lunch and like all reviewers have posted, dark, dank, and dirty outside. There was no air conditioning!!! What kind of place has no air conditioning at 12pm in Texas!!! That was ridiculous. The food was mediocre. I don’t recommend it. Go to EuroCafe.

So disappointed. My first time to eat here and it was pretty bad. Atmosphere was dark and floors and tables felt «sticky» Hummus was flavorless-​no lemon, no garlic, no salt, very bland. Tzatziki sauce was inedible and loaded with salt, no cucumber in it and it honestly tasted like dry Hidden Valley Ranch dressing mix was added to it. Pita was out of a package and not tender and warm. Meat, vegetables, salad and rice were ok. I took a friend who had never had this type of cuisine and felt bad that this was her first experience with Mediterranean food. She said the tea ‘was good’. Service was great. I just feel bad for them as I am sure they are college students and making tips here must be difficult. It was pretty dead. One last thing, please sweep the pavement in front of your entrance… it is filthy and makes it appear as if the place is not in operation.
This would be a great place for Restaurant Impossible… lots of potential, prime location and needs some help! Robert Irvine to the rescue please!

I did not realize this place is a hooka lounge as well. I ordered my beef and lamb gyro without onions with seasoned fried to go. I’d rather the fresh fries than a bag of chips. It was wonderfully fresh. Great service. If I am ever in town again I will call ahead to avoid the 2^nd hand smoke. =)

The ambiance is sub-​par, but wow the food is absolutely fabulous! I would stick to the gyros section and skip the slightly over-​priced entrees, beware there is a smoking section and it is pretty awful though.

I can’t continue to throw away my money here.
It’s now $ 10 to eat a lunch buffet here. TEN DOLLARS. For lunch! Plus the cost of a drink is $ 2, and a dollar’s worth of tax brings lunch for one person to $ 13… before tip. I ended up spending sixteen dollars on lunch! NEVER. AGAIN.
The worst part of it was that I was told by a waitress that my sister wasn’t allowed to share any of my food. She ordered her own lunch plate! But it was still deemed necessary to treat two grown women like children and tell us what we were and were not allowed to do with our own meals. As if we were conspiring to eat more of the buffet than my TEN DOLLARS was worth.
Maybe this is why you’re so empty all the time, Cedar’s. Because your prices are too high and you insult your customers. I’d rather go to EuroCafe.

I love Cedars, but I’m trying to review this place as if a hungry out-​of-​towner is depending on my sole review to decide where to eat in San Marcos on their only night in this town. The food is straight up mediocre. There, I said it. My least favorite thing is paying $ 5 for a hummus appetizer, and getting 4 lonely pita triangles. You want more? $ 1.50. Oh okay, guess I’ll be eating hummus with my hands then.
I do enjoy coming here on cold evenings, ordering a giant pot of Moroccan tea, lentil soup, and studying my life away (well, all but the last bit). But then as I’m gazing out of the dirty windows, noticing a dead fly lying on the window sill and thinking about how wonderfully dive-​y this place is, a group of dorky college freshmen will come in, order round after round of stinky hookah bowls, and talk very loudly about what level they are in some video game. I know this because it’s happening right now.
My advice, if you want Mediterranean food in San Marcos, is to come here for their lunch time buffet and sit far away from the smoking section. All the pita triangles you want, plus no unwanted smoke drifting onto your plate.

Very friendly staff and nice food menu. I’ve never been unhappy and they have good prices. If you like to hang around in there, they have some couches and a hookah menu. Their breakfast menu is awesome and so is the hummus! It’s a place that seems empty but most people get their food to go! I recommend this place!

Great prices on a wonderful selection of Mediterranean foods. I highly recommend the grape leaves. Falafel is some of the best I’ve ever had. The breakfast is served in heaping portions, all day long with great healthy choices for the main dish and sides. Coffee is some of the best I’ve had in quite some time (and I drink a lot of it). For vegetarians like me, this is the place to go for healthy options in the college-​town food desert of San Marcos. Also, always great service, and no smoking in the restaurant, unlike other cafes in town. There is a hookah bar connected, but it is never a concern for air quality. Lots of booth seating a great plus and free wifi is always good!

I like this little place. It’s very quiet and the food was very good. Not the absolute best falafel I’ve ever had in my life, but it was good enough to go back again. I like that they serve fries with their gyros. :)
This is one of those kind of divey places you keep a secret about.

I went in the middle of the day and it was empty, I was worried.
I’m not a hookah/​smoking person but they had a separate room for it.
I sat down and the waiter was very helpful and very knowledgeable about the menu and helped point me to gluten-​free items (My Girlfriend lives GF).
Falafal was good!
The gyro meat was meaty soft and flavorful.
The hummus wasn’t much to talk about
Definitely going back.

Cedar’s is a pretty alright place. Mediterranean is part of my trinity of favorite foods (along with Indian and Japanese) and therefore this place was a staple during my time living in San Marcos, and I’m sure it’ll remain a lunch spot now that I commute over there four times a week.
I always got the vegetarian delight. The falafel was flavorful but consistently dry, the tabbouleh had mint in it, which I personally am just not fond of, but the vegetable sauté was delicious with the warm pita.
Half the restaurant is a hookah lounge, which I think is kind of annoying, but you can’t smell it from the restaurant seating and there generally aren’t many people in that half. The place is usually kind of a ghost town, which is honestly kind of nice in San Marcos because a lot of the better restaurants are crowded.
Overall I liked it, it adequately fills the mediterranean niche in the San Marcos restaurant community.

I’ll give it a 4 stars as its not too often you get fairly authentic Middle Eastern/​Mediterranean food.
Came here on a Sunday morning and noticed the place seemed very dead. After fighting the urge to leave, decided to sit down and order the Mezze plate. The food was very good as the Baba Ghanoush was probably the best I had in a long time along with a very good tabouleh, hummus, falafel, and kibbe. Didn’t do dessert, but would be interested to see if that was authentic too.
The big drawback was the spotty service. While our server was pleasant enough, he seemed easily distracted and very seldomly returned to refill on coffee (a cardinal sin in my book) or us in general.

Forget the food. It’s Mediterranean diner faire, frozen then fried. But Cedars’s «hookah lounge» makes for a perfect place to study for those looking for a refuge from the sometimes chatty, undergrad feel of several of San Marcos’s cafes.
English grad students and those with post-​college lives read, hang, and eat in the lounge regularly. It’s never particularly busy, and you are welcome to bring your laptop (free Wi-​Fi) and sit around for as long as you like.
Be sure to order a pot of their Moroccan tea, which has fresh mint. It’s the jewel of the menu. Don’t hesitate to talk to the owner, Sam, either. He’s one of the friendliest business owners and always makes for interesting conversation about culture and politics, not to mention he packs a mean hookah.

We eat here often, and it’s very good. The dolmas (grape leaves), beef and lamb gyros, and the shawarma are my favs. The baklava is okay, I’ve had better, but still good. Next to try: spanokopita, baba ganouj, falafel, and lentil soup. My only complaint is the cleanliness. It could definitely be cleaner. Oh, and the Greek salad, I order it everytime, but what’s a girl gotta do to get fresh veggies in San Marcos?!
While you’re there, try a Vimto soda, it’s like a Big Red, but not as sweet. DON’T try the «Mexican» Coca-​Cola. It’s just a Coke in a bottle made with cane sugar instead of HFCS.
There’s a hookah/​shisha bar there, we don’t smoke there as we have our own at home, but we do buy their hookah tobacco, it’s very flavourful. We really like the jasmine and melon.

Though this isn’t typically the Mediterranean food I’m used to, the owner was so incredibly nice and helped me pick out a really good dish.
There are so many items on the menu and they even have the option of burgers or subs for people who may be wary of trying Mediterranean cuisine. They also have a lot of great vegetarian options as well which is really nice since there aren’t many good vegetarian places in San Marcos.
I tried their Chicken gyro and really enjoyed it. I really wish there was a bit more sauce in it, but it was good nonetheless. The platter came with a choice of chips or fries. I tried the fries with my meal and I really enjoyed the seasoning on them. They were crisp and crunchy just the way I like them.
I also learned that they have a lunch buffet for around $ 7. I’ve never tried it, but I’m thinking it would be a fun thing to do especially since I love Mediterranean food.
I would definitely recommend this place for the great service and the pretty good food. Next time, I will try the falafel. Apparently, this is the only place you can get falafel in San Marcos anyway.
Update: I tried the falafel and while the actual falafel patties were good, there wasn’t enough tahini sauce on the sandwich and it just tasted really dry. :(

Cedars is a Mediterranean style restaurant with a lunch buffet during the week. I like Mediterranean food in general because there are usually many vegan options. Cedars has things like tabbouleh, falafel, hummus, baba ganouj, and dolmas on the menu, plenty to have a filling meal. They also have a eggplant in tomato sauce dish which is pretty tasty, and warm pita bread in the buffet. Really, the buffet is your best choice here if available. Lunch options are around $ 6 and I believe the buffet was $ 8 or $ 9 last time i went. The menu items are generally fresh and good, and the portions are just above average for the price.
I haven’t had any problems with the waitstaff like a few of the other reviewers, but one problem I have is that the adjacent hookah bar can’t quite contain all the smoke in there (no door) and so the dining area often smells like stale smoke. Sometimes the food covers it up, but sometimes it doesn’t. Also, when dining off of the menu, their side salads are too expensive. A side house salad which is pretty small and just has lettuce, tomatoes, onions and an olive is over $ 3.
Cedars gets 4 stars because the food is good and affordable, they are local and are in a good location, and San Marcos needs more variety.

I LOVE this plae! Good food and service plus a seperate Hookah bar area where you can smoke if that’s your thing. A friend of mine goes to the buffet and says its great.
Try the coffee in the teeny tiny cup~ you’ll be ON for hours!!!

Cedars is an interesting mixed bag of a place.
On the plus side, they have decent and reasonably priced Mediterranean food, including a lunch buffet with a decent selection that includes gyros, pita, hummus, and dolmas. The food’s generally tasty and well-​prepared. If I’m having a craving for Greek, this is the only place in town that will scratch that itch.
On the other hand, the service there tends to be pretty inattentive. They seem chronically understaffed, and the waitstaff has a tendency to get distracted with friends or who-​knows-​what in the back room. While they’re friendly and obviously not deliberately neglectful, they could stand to swing by the table about twice as often as they do. The attached hookah bar is an interesting touch as well.
So all in all, a nice addition to the city’s culinary palette, and worth a visit — especially if you’re not in any particular hurry.