Damascus Gate Restaurant, The Worlds Largest Restaurant

04 July 2009

Most high-end restaurants you'll ever visit are medium-sized, able to handle relatively large crowds if need be, but better equipped to keep the numbers low. Other restaurants are a bit larger, offering a cafeteria-like setting, handling hundreds of people within its walls.

One restaurant, the world's largest, by far, is like an amusement park. There's really no logical way to describe the sheer size of Syria's Damascus Gate. The gargantuan scale restaurant primarily serves people outside. It's an actual replica of the famous Damascus Gate and has a working waterfall on the premises.

The restaurant is owned by esteemed businessman Shaker Samman who built the restaurant in hopes of topping Syria's list of the areas largest. However, once word spread about this massive eatery, representatives from the Guinness Book of World Records made the trek and named Damascus Gate as the largest restaurant in the entire world. No pun intended, but that's certainly no small feat. The world is packed with enormous restaurants, although many are not high-end; Damascus dwarfs them all with room to spare.

Before Samman's dream-child was complete, the largest restaurant in the world was a massive eatery in Bangkok that held 5,000 seats - larger than some sporting stadiums. With a hefty price tag of over $32-million, Samman beat this by over 1,000, giving diners 6,014 different places to sit to enjoy their food in the cool Syrian breeze.

Built to be more than a simple restaurant, Damascus Gate stands out as a symbol of triumph after a prolonged period of economic turmoil and social isolation. Syria boasts over 7-million tourists annually, a large portion of which stop in to eat at Damascus Gate.

In order to break the record, the restaurant had to do more than seat diners comfortably. After all, if that were the only stipulation, you could give forks to everyone at Madison Square Garden and name that the largest restaurant with 20,000 seats. Guinness' stipulations stated that all diners at all tables must be catered to as in a regular restaurant. Damascus' staff didn't disappoint. Operating more like a finely-tuned factory than a kitchen, the dedicated cooks and service staff proved that they could handle the load.

The dining area is 54,000 square feet (actually more than twice the size of the aforementioned Madison Square Garden), and over 1,500 staff members are employed. Like any production line, tasks are broken down and sectioned off. There are multiple kitchens - there are actually multiple restaurants technically. They just all happen to share the same property. It's akin to the food court in the mall knocking down the walls and seating everyone together, although under the same management.

Guests can choose from Chinese food, Indian cuisine, Italian, and more. The average cost of a meal is around 15 dollars (American), so it's definitely affordable. To check out the biggest restaurant the world has ever known, it would be worth twice that just to take a tour, much less grab a great meal.
Tags: largest restaurant, damascus gate, syria, shaker samman, guinness book of world records, 54,000 square feet,
Posted In: Travel, Fine Dining,

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ziad ahmad - 08 July 2010

"...great rest... great food..great atmosphere..."

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