Babalu

My coworker’s and I decided to do happy hour here. The food was okay, the server not good at all !! Bad service ! Bathrooms were so dirty, Wine glasses had lipstick stains all over, just nasty ! We decided to leave and go to a different place. Would not recommend. :(

Such a bad place with trashy drunk people and moroccan prostitutes!!! Plain nasty just don’t go there.

I have been to this place on numerous occasions with friends and on different nights. My fav definitely has to be Thursday nights, but I also really enjoyed Wednesday nights when they play Latin music. I love that I can party at this place without having to head all the way to DC on a week night. It’s close to home and that works great for me! My friends and I have also headed here for a quiet happy hour to unwind and the deals have been good. I must also definitely recommend the chicken kabob it’s my favorite dish there!

This is by far the worst hookah bar I’ve ever been to. If you’re looking for a trashy lounge with a bunch of low life’s, prostitutes, drug heads, and felons it’s definitely your spot. None of their tables are reserved they just try to trick you so you can sit down and then overprice the hell out of you for horrible service, food, and hookah. I don’t know what’s going on at this place, everyone around you is not in their right state of mind. There are a bunch of bouncers that physically check your pockets before you go in. Very uncomfortable experience, seriously I just wanted some hookah.

The worst place I have ever been too I will never go again and if ur bum it’s your spot

I frequently visit this place w my friends and coworkers. I love coming here. Let me just say their food is always great, I’ve had appetizers to dinner. Love having chicken kebab (juicy, tender) beef kebab. All were great. Hookah service is fast and they bring you disposable head (sorry don’t know hookah term) fresh out of package. Double apple and blue mist are must try. Every time I go there, there’s Dj and always crowded. This place is more like a lounge/​club. I like going there on Thursday night. It’s mixed crowd. People are always dancing on the floor.
Bar staffs are very attentive and professional.
Khan and Shareef never made me wait long time for drinks. I can just grab my drink and go back to dancing without wasting time on waiting. Drinks are always right and reasonably priced. Thank you bartenders for their great service. One of the reason I love coming here. If you’re in tysons area looking for place to eat/​chill any day of the week go to Babalu.

One of my favorite places in the DMV area to go and relax. Their hookah is always amazing! The staff is great and you have so much free parking its crazy! The food is really unique and delicious (you really get your money’s worth). Drinks are great and music is even better (I am a big fan of the Thursday Night parties). Dont listen to the few negative reviews below, any place you go to on a packed busy night is going to have some issues (which I haven’t experienced). I highly recommend this place to everyone.

Went here for the first time last night after my sister let me know that it gets really good on certain nights. First impression:
1) Parking was a breeze, there is a garage right next to it. All the spaces say «reserved» but no one had a problem parking there. If you don’t feel comfortable parking there you can park at the Wal Mart across the street.
2) Security was pretty nice.
3) The girl that happened to be at the check in section last night was excuse my French, a total B*TCH! So rude, she is not made for customer service.
4) The promotion group hosting was great as always (believe it was COC).
5) To the bar… it was a pretty good sized bar with only 2 bartenders. I probably stood there waiting to order a drink for 15 – 20 mins. That was for the Asian lady. I finally got my Long Island. After some time I decided I did want a hookah. There was another Asian man bartender who literally had to have seen me waiting to order something for probably around 30 minutes (mind you I am very patient and always polite). Finally I was able to flag down the Asian lady to get my hookah. I think it came out to $ 23 or $ 24, I gave the lady $ 30 cash and she NEVER BROUGHT ME MY CHANGE. I damn sure wasn’t planning on giving anyone a $ 5-​$ 7 tip for the type of service I was receiving. It was like she was avoiding me after she took my cash so I pretty much gave up on getting anything back. I think this is extremely funny because my sisters friends boyfriend ordered a drink 2 night before. The drink cost $ 8, he gave the same lady a $ 20 bill and she took $ 10 for herself until he confronted her about it.
So to sum this place up for you apparently Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights are pretty good. The woman I encounter at the front last night happened to be very rude and the bartenders ARE HORRIBLE. Don’t expect anything great from this place besides the music.

Went out with friends and we had a blast. The music was really great and on a Tuesday night… We got a table and the drinks were actually really good. The bartender I went to was the best. I will for sure be back with my friends.

If you enjoy waiting, look no further. Waiting for drinks, waiting for hookah or just waiting for your server to close out your tab. We asked the server to put on the Thursday night NFL football game, he looks up points and says «that is football…» Keep in mind it was an NCAA game. We asked for a specific flavor hookah on the menu and he says «no you don’t want that…»
We were stuck here for an hour and half just to close our tab…

SHERIF has by far the best service I’ve seen at babalu, ALWAYS attentive and friendly. Best hookah and music in the tysons area.

They have terrible service. Their staff is very limited and uneducated. They charged me for drinks I did not order considering they did not consult with me. They will take advantage of your tab and will charge you extra. The owner got very defensive and wanted to call the cops when I told him how bad the service was. Avoid this area.

This place is a true gem in Tysons. Its a place where you can literally enter in any time of day, and you are almost guaranteed to have a great time. During the night it’s a great place specially on Thursdays as a lot of the people from clubbing scene like to spend time here.
Regarding the day, a hookah and the food menu are almost perfect for anyone. Their hookah comes with its finest quality tobacco that I believe comes from Dubai, and food reflects real Mediterranean Middle Eastern cusine that is really soothing for the pallet. Every time when he brought a girl here for a date, they were amazed by the looks of the place, by the food and as always by the hospitality of servers and managers working there. I would definitely recommend this place to anyone who is in for a good treat.

I know everyone know this place as a party place but i need to mention their food. This place has an amazing food (chicken kabbob, pizza it’s of the hook).They have the best hookah in town too.
I love this place

Amazing place, I had a really good hookah.
Staff was friendly from the beginning.
Couldn’t try their food, next time for sure!
I highly recommend this place!

The worst place you will ever go to. If you are not Arab, stay away from this place. The manager and servers will not even give u any attention. They only select their own people and serve. Managment and stuff with low mentality. It’s shame to have a restaurant and make feel customers this way. The only positive experience hookah is good. I will never go to this place again. Place is like Darna, but Darna gives amazing service.
Stay away from this place if you are not their own people. Awful service

I really like this place! The interior is classy, and the atmosphere is very nice. It’s a very nice place but not many people know of it. So when there party nights come around there’s not always a lot of people. But they play good music (except on Fridays, they onlyyyyy play Arabic music on Fridays, which I don’t mind but eventually it just begins to bore me) and they have pretty good food.
I’d heard so many good things about their flavor «Blue Sea» and it really is amazing! I love this flavor to bits I could smoke it all day. The quality of the hookah is much better now than it was before in the beginning when this place opened up.
The service here is also amazing. The waiters and waitresses are extremely friendly and make me feel good about being there. I really enjoy going here.

This is a chill spot to hang out, smoke hookah, socialize and listen to some music. Based on all the reviews of the food here, I’m not sure if I’d want to try it. As for the hookah, they have some great flavors. We had the Blue Sea flavor and it was really good! It’s a bit too overpriced, not sure why.
I like the lighting and décor of this establishment, felt a bit like a upscale lounge with a good seating arrangement. The place was clean and the servers were very friendly. We had a great time as we mingled with other patrons and enjoyed ourselves.
I would probably come back here to smoke hookah and try their other flavors. There are some cute chicks here! Middle Eastern and North African women… heavenly beauties lol
Their best nights here are friday and saturday as with most places. It’s a good location as there are plenty of restaurants in the area and the Tysons mall is close by as well. It draws a good crowd and the place is almost packed.

This is a great place to smoke hookah but NOT to have dinner. I’m impressed with the décor and ambiance but the food and dinner service was disappointing. I had my birthday celebration here last fall and the organization was just terrible. We had made reservations for about 30 people, and when we arrived, they were not prepared or they did not know about it. We had to push our OWN tables together in the private dining area while the server (note ONE server) was not present to help. They assigned us one server for 30 people thus making the service insanely slow. One of my friend got up and requested a second server from the shift manager. HE HAD TO GET UP AND ASK! I don’t want to sound snooty by shouldn’t servers be attentive to these kinds of things?
Anyway, I think the owner came in later on the evening and fixed everything — making sure that we were well catered and even gave free bottles of champagne. We then proceeded to the lounge area and smoked hookah. The night, at first, was a disaster and I was so embarrassed to pick such a place to celebrate my birthday but it got better and ended as a night to remember… in a good way.

Walked in for lunch buffet an hour before it ended. We told the host/​server we wanted lunch buffet and he acknowledged our request as we sat down. Absolutely none of the food platters were warm and pretty much EMPTY.
1) Why would you seat customers if you have almost no food?
2) Why would you seat customers if whatever remaining food you have is cold?
The restaurant was empty and I understand if you did not want to waste money by remaking all the lunch buffet food items for one party but then TELLL US lunch buffet regrettably ended early today or SOMETHING. Why would you SEAT US???
We sat down. Looked at the food. Said «There’s no food» and walked out. The host/​server said, «Oh. Ok.»
Really?
I’m not even interested in what the lunch buffet WOULD HAVE tasted like now.