There was no table and no counter. The entire place is machine-order and locker-pickup only, with no staff around. The whole experience is a mess if you don't know what to expect.
The front has no sign because it's a pickup hub for multiple restaurants. People picking up orders just scan their code at the scanner and wait. People coming in for a specific restaurant, like us, were completely confused and had to figure everything out on our own with no instructions.
The only sign at the entrance says "Food Pickup." We had to go inside and look around the entire place. The order screen showed a menu for some Turkish food. Even the paper menus stacked on the wall were for the Turkish place. We thought we had come to the wrong location. There was no one around to ask, and when we called the restaurant's phone number from Google, no one answered.
We went back inside again. It's just a room with a bench for waiting and lockers along the wall. I checked the order machine again and discovered there are 11 pages of restaurants on the screen with no search bar, and they aren't even listed alphabetically. Good luck finding the restaurant you came for. Shawarma Press was on page 2. Since we were already there, we decided to order something just to avoid wasting the drive. We got:
- One chicken wrap
- One beef & lamb wrap (there's no option for beef only)
- One cheese tart
They force a minimum 15% tip despite zero service, and you can't customize or remove it. Each wrap cost $15.99. When I got home, I realized that ordering online from their Johns Creek location is only $9.99 per wrap. It really started to feel like a scam. Their website doesn't even list the Midtown location for online ordering.
After ordering, they sent a text to my phone. When the food was ready, they sent another text telling me which locker to pick it up from. The whole process has zero human interaction, yet they still force a 15% tip. While waiting, I saw a couple and a few others walk in and look just as confused. One couple couldn't figure out how to find their restaurant in the 11-page list, got frustrated, and left. Honestly, we should have left too.
We had planned for a nice weekend dinner out, but ended up just picking up the food and going home. The experience was awful. They didn't label the shawarma bags, so we had to bite into the wraps to tell which was chicken and which was beef. I had asked for my wrap to be cut in half, but they didn't do that either.
I was hoping the food would make up for all the frustration, but it didn't. The chicken wrap was just okay. The beef & lamb wrap had such a strong lamb smell that I gave up after two bites. The only good thing was the wrap bread, but it was definitely not worth almost $50. The cheese tart was dry and bland.
We were so disappointed afterward that we decided to blacklist this place entirely. read more