About Awtar Restaurant
Awtar Restaurant is the Levantine-fine-dining flagship of the Sheraton Dammam Hotel & Convention Centre — the Marriott-International five-star property on King Saud Road that has been the Dammam corporate-event standby since the 1980s. The restaurant occupies the hotel's signature dining hall, with the Arabian-mashrabiya-screen architecture, the brass-lantern lighting, the hand-woven-carpet floor accents, and the live-oud-musician background that runs Thursday-Saturday evenings.
The menu is the Levantine canon at hotel-flagship execution: the slow-cooked lamb mansaf with jameed yoghurt sauce and pine nuts, the Lebanese mixed-grill (shish taouk, kofta, kebab), the fattoush-and-tabbouleh fresh-salads, the Saudi-Arabian kabsa rice with lamb shank, and the daily-bread tannour (the wood-fired flatbread baked in front of the diners). The signature shawarma-platter — the table-side carving of the marinated lamb-and-chicken from the rotating spit — is the photo-moment of the evening. A multi-course Levantine dinner for two runs SAR 400-600 ($105-160).
The room is the Saudi-corporate-event canvas. The Sheraton Dammam dining-hall scale (capacity around 250 across the main hall, the private salons, and the outdoor terrace) makes Awtar the standard-issue Eastern-Province corporate-event-and-celebration-dinner venue. The mashrabiya-screen and the brass-lantern decor read as proper-Saudi-Arabian-formal without going touristy.
Reservations matter for the Friday-Saturday weekend evenings and the Ramadan iftar/suhoor peaks; one week ahead is enough. The restaurant accepts cards, the menu carries Arabic-and-English, and the post-dinner Sheraton-lobby Arabic-coffee-and-dates service is the conventional close.
Best Occasion Fit
As a first date, the Levantine-formal setting and the live-oud background hold the Saudi-Arabian-cultural-readability without going stiff. For birthdays the hotel-banquet capacity handles groups of fifteen-to-fifty. For team dinners the long-table setup and the table-side shawarma-carving deliver the proper Saudi-corporate-celebration rhythm.
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