Anissa M.
Yelp
I hate to give a Muslim business a review that isn't glowing, but my family's experience here was so strange I have to say something, if only to give the staff and management some critique so they can improve in the future. TL;DR -- Overall score 6/10 (Food 7/10, atmosphere 9/10, service 2/10), not coming back.
Food: 7/10
We ordered a medium cheese pizza, a rare ribeye steak, and kheer. The cheese pizza was a 10/10. The ideal hot, fresh, perfectly greasy cheese pizza that brought me back to my giddy childhood years. I intended to only eat one slice and ended up eating four because it was so good I couldn't stop.
But things took a strange turn with the steak. My dad repeated multiple times when ordering that he wanted it rare. When it arrived, it was beautifully presented, sizzling away on a hot plate decorated with caramelized onions. The scent was heavenly. But when he cut into it, it was well-done. Brown all the way through. A rare steak should only be brown on the outside-- it should be predominantly pink with a red center. With the hot plate in mind, a mid-rare steak would have been acceptable (brown exterior with a pink interior and no red) since hot plates continue to cook food after it's been taken off the grill. But it was entirely brown.
My dad has previously worked as a chef and is very passionate about cooking and very picky about his steaks. At any other restaurant, especially chain restaurants, he would have sent it back immediately and asked for a proper steak. But because this was a Muslim establishment, he ended up letting my mom, who likes well-done steaks, eat it instead.
Service: 5/10
When the server returned & asked how everything was, my dad expressed that his steak was overdone. She understood and expressed that she'd put in a complaint for us and offered to take it back or remove it from the bill. My dad said it was fine, he just wanted them not to make the same mistake with a future customer. That's when a man who I assume was the cook came out to speak with us. He was extremely defensive & tried to tell my dad that the steak was not over-cooked. When my dad shared that he himself was a chef and he knows the difference between a rare and well-done steak, the gentleman became even more defensive, asking where my dad had been a chef and continuing to deny the steak was overdone, to which even the server insisted that even she knew a rare steak "should be pink inside".
At that point I realized I had never gotten the Kheer I ordered, so I asked about it and they offered to go & get it. A few minutes later the same gentleman returned with two other desserts & told us they had no kheer but offered one of the other two desserts instead. I didn't know what they were, so I said I wasn't sure which one I wanted instead. He then made the comment "But you're a chef's daughter! You should know more about food than I do."
That was extremely disrespectful and rude. His tone was insulting, and the comment itself was nonsensical. All the desserts were South Asian desserts-- gulab jamun, jalebi, kheer, and halwas-- and I only knew what kheer was because I had been served it at a friend's house once. My family is White and Pacific Islander Asian. How am I supposed to know what an entirely different culture's desserts are just by being presented them in tupperware? My dad is an Irish-American. Steak is a fairly Americanized dish, and you don't need to have cultural knowledge to know when meat is burnt. I had no way of knowing what was in the tupperware he presented even if I had been told the name of the dishes since it's not my culture.
I gave up and just asked the gentleman to reccomend me his choice. It was the carrot halwa, which I'd never had before. I wasn't a huge fan. It tasted okay, but wasn't what I had wanted or anything I was familiar with. At that point I was just embarrassed, put-out, and defeated, so I put my head down and ate what I was given.
Atmosphere: 9/10
Lovely family pizzeria feel with an open kitchen and pleasant table layout. Clean, organized, no major issues nor especially masterful aesthetic.
Conclusion: Not Coming Back
I felt so disrespected by the gentleman's behavior. Him arguing with a customer about what a rare steak is was strange enough, let alone the rude way in which he dealt with them being out of something we ordered. The young women who served us originally were lovely and the food was delicious even if improperly prepared, so it's a shame that he ruined our family's experience and made us hesitant to return. I don't want to go back to a restaurant I was spoken down to in, Muslim-run or not. Even if my dad was wrong about the steak being overdone (which he clearly was not), he should never have spoken to playing customers in the way that he did. It was downright bitter and egotistical and I hope he never speaks like that to a customer that isn't already predisposed to a favorable opinion of the place due to being other Muslims.
