Mediocre Middle Eastern food... But it's cheap, I guess...
If you get one thing, get the shawarma, but don't get your hopes up about anything else.
Food: 2 (Yet another place for falafel and shawarma. [sarcasm] Yay.)
Service: 2 (Your menus are confusing)
Drinks: N/A
Atmosphere: N/A
Value: 3 (You get what you pay for: cheap food that is also inexpensive and filling)
Sustainability: 1 (While they use Go Box!, a very good idea, everything else felt as if it came out of a plastic bag from Sysco or Costco)
Saaj Baghdad serves Iraqi food consisting of shawarma, gyros, tzatziki, falafel, and for some reason, chicken wings and french fries as well as a smattering of other American-ish food. Sandwiches and plates range from $5 - 8. If I don't sound excited, it's because I'm not.
We rolled up to the cart on an unseasonably cool May day, ordered a lamb shawarma ($8), a gyros platter with rice($6), and chicken wings and frise [sic] for $6. Their menu was complex and confused--two were employed, each with conflicting enumerations, and we weren't sure what we were going to get nor how much anything was. Our meal total was $20.
The six, thin slabs of gyros meat were served on neon yellow rice--reminding me of the worst microwaved paella I got in a tourist area of Barcelona--obviously not colored from saffron as the color is meant to suggest. The shawarma was by far the star of the show, boasting grilled vegetables and tender lamb in a triangular pocket bread that was almost reminiscent of Delicios's hot dog crust. The four wings were encrusted in corporate spices and accompanied with listless shoestring french fries, ketchup, tzatziki, and a thousand-island-like dipping sauce. They were slightly cold in the middle, obviously being reheated from a plastic bag bought in bulk and frozen for maybe a year.
It took us ten minutes to get our order. The guy in the cart made everything on his own and in fairly quick succession.
Gut check at 3pm: We had three entrees, so hunger wasn't an issue here. In this case, you get what you pay for. Like with the last place, you get what you pay for. Here, we got enough food, but it was mediocre in quality. It was obviously Sysco-quality fare: the gyros were obviously reheated Kronos.
While they use GoBox!, but everything else reeked of factory farms. The lettuce was even iceberg and unappetizing. The tzatziki had no real zing to it... I felt that Costco may have been another supplier. The plastic forks were an unwelcome accompaniment to the meal as well.
Middle Eastern food isn't scary. But I was a bit afraid of slightly-chilly chicken wings in the middle as well as frozen goth-knows-where-it-comes-from meat. I'm not looking for E. Coli, but this is the sort of outlet where the overall American industrial food supply will expose me to it.
Limp fries and meh food aren't exciting. While the shawarma was passable, just about everything we had was simply unimpressive. There's no reason that this place will grow or be destined for greatness.
The other research I did on this place was excited about the bread. That's right. The bread is exciting. Sorry, but if triangular bread is the most exciting thing about the cart, there are no points for creativity here. Reheating frozen food is the thing that TV dinners are made of and not the reason I go out to eat. read more
