Ella Middle Eastern Restaurant & Lounge — Restaurant in Milton

If I could give it zero stars I would, I don't often leave bad reviews but this was another level of catastrophe. Went in Feb 14 at 6:45 for my birthday dinner with a few friends, left super frustrated and disappointed, you could not pay me to return to this mess of a "restaurant" (note they were not that busy the whole time). The staff are incompetent and seem like they have no idea what they are doing or how to do it. They also have zero customer service skills, their attitudes made my friends and I feel like a burden just for basic questions and requests. We sat for around 3 hours, and within that time frame we were checked on maybe 4 times in total. I had to basically hunt down the servers if we needed anything. We ordered smash burgers, after waiting for half an hour I asked a server if they could check on them, to which I was told 2 more minutes. After another 30 minutes passed I had to get up and find a server to once again ask about out food. She checked and said they would be out soon. The lazy presentation and the pathetic cold burger (if your charging 24 dollars for a burger it should not look and taste like a fast food burger) caused us to loose our appetites as well as the almost 2 hours wait. When the burgers came out they did not even give us the fries that came with them, so for the fourth time I had to flag down a server and ask her about the fries. She tried to tell me that it comes with fries only if we ask for a combo, which was not true and I knew that because I had read the menu (how can your customers know the menu better than your staff). By the time they brought out the fries we had finished our burgers, so our meal was awkwardly split in half. Mind you the lady in a polkadot shirt who seemed to be the supervisor/manager was going around giving other tables free deserts drinks and top tier service, while my table couldn't even get the food we ordered and were ready to pay for. I requested to speak to the owner and for some reason the server felt entitled to know why, after going back and forth for no reason she said she would bring him. 15 min pass and nothing. Then another server comes out with a complementary dessert, I guess they saw how frustrated we were getting. The desert was disgusting, I asked once again to speak to the owner to which I was told he was in a meeting (later found out he was just sitting smoking shisha and eating while his store is a mess). I had to go up to the counter and ask to speak to someone in charge, I spoke to some lady in a polka dot shirt that had previously had an unnecessary attitude with my friends and I. The way she spoke to the servers was not okay, treating them like they are her slaves and speaking extremely aggressively to them in front of customers. I began to explain the situation, I was so frustrated at this point. She kept telling me to relax and calm down and its not that serious, mind you I was very relaxed, I'm not the type of person to cause a scene, but I will speak up when the situation is unacceptable. She was very touchy with me and kept patting/rubbing my shoulder which made me uncomfortable (I am a minor), a few other servers were touchy as well, I don't know why they think that's okay. She was so condescending and belittling towards me, before even hearing the full situation she offered to comp all of the food, which just goes to show that they know the shit show they are running. They attempted to give us the food for take away, which we did not want, we just wanted to leave at that point, she was very pushy about us staying which was annoying. They brought out some nasty deserts thinking that would make up for the hours lost and the ruined birthday. We left and ended up going to another store in the same plaza. Another thing to note is that they do not have a specific area for those who want to smoke shisha, it's just everywhere, so the whole time we were just in a smelly smoke. They also had kids seated in the same area beside tables that were smoking, how is that okay?? Do not come waste your time, money and energy at...

On Thursday April 17, my friend and I visited ghazal in hopes of seeing the new place and to try the new food, and in those terms both were fantastic. In terms of customer service though not so much. I want to start off by saying I am a regular customer and have been visiting since paramount days and even Ella days and now gazal. When we previously went to paramount, we had a server named Georgina, and were pleased with her customer service then, I even had a 5 star review for her. When we recently came to ghazal, Georgina was working again, we requested to sit outside in the patio area since the weather was nice and Georgina and the other employee were kind enough to let us do so. We ordered 3 manakeesh and brought our laptops to get some work done while enjoying the nice morning. As some of you may know, they also do not offer tap water at all, only overpriced water bottles, so me and my friend requested from one of the employees two empty cups to split up a drink we purchased elsewhere before entering. The employee kindly brought over two empty mugs and we enjoyed our drink. While we were sitting there, we started hearing very loud screaming in the back coming from Georgina, for every customer to hear. This was very shocking to not only me and my friend but visibly to everyone else sitting there. Regardless, we brushed it off and some time later, the same employee came by and put takeaway boxes on our table and left without saying anything. Almost as to say time’s up and we should leave, mind you at this time there was maybe a maximum of 2 other tables with almost no one inside the restaurant. Anyways we stay there and some time later another friend shows up to join us and as she is sitting there looking through the menu, Georgina comes stomping in with the paying machine in hand, basically implying for us to leave again even though we weren’t ready to leave and were even thinking of ordering some more food. She very rudely asks the new person if they are planning on ordering anything and when put on the spot my friend responded saying no I don’t think so and closed the menu. My friend pays and soon after realizes we were charged on the bill 2 teas which was $4 each and came up to an additional $9.04. We let Georgina know and she brought back $8 in cash. We then realized that still didn’t account for the tax we payed and let her know about that. At this point she was visibly losing patience and went to the back, came out with a dollar, slammed it on the takeaway boxes that was previously put on our table disrespectfully and stomped away. I am not one who usually writes reviews, but both me and my friend felt extremely violated and disrespected after...

Paramount used to be one of our favs for tasty immaculately cooked shish tawouk in Milton. Sadly with this new approach that the newly renovated Ella restaurant has taken their priority seems to have shifted from amazing food to jazzy ambience. The whole place looks way less welcoming now for families with kids or of certain look, ethnicity perhaps, I am not sure what is going on. We visited this place last week and were seated to the side of the restaurant on the covered patio end, not in the main restaurant. They have made minor changes to their menu and removed some of the kids favorites like the garlic cheese bread, cookies etc. We ordered our usual shish tawouk wrap and meal and requested the waitress to make them spicy. When the order came neither the meal not the wrap shish tawouk were made spicy they were the regular ones. Second and most disappointingly the wrap was stuffed with soggy fries (60-70% of it) with very little chicken and some pickles. Overall it tasted really bad!! If I wanted to eat fries I would go to Mc Donald's, where atleast they are crispy and not hidden inside a shish tawouk wrap as cheap fillers. When we asked the waitress who was serving us, she reacted equally surprised like us and said yes that has never happened before blah blah and that it was a mistake. We returned the wrap which she took back to the kitchen but never came back with an explanation or apology to us. After waiting to be attended to for almost 10-15 mins we waved at her and requested for some boxes. She never came back with it, instead we saw her leave guess it was end of her shift. And we continued to wait for another 10ish mins before we could wave at another waiter, asked him to bring us some boxes and the bill and explained the issue with the food. He got us the boxes and then sent another waitress for the bill to whom we had to again explain the issue with the wrap. This one completely changed the tone and said that they have now moved to the more "traditional" way of making shawarma and wraps with fries! In the end she removed it from the bill as the menu did not indicate that the wraps are now mostly filled with fries instead of chicken. Overally really bad experience, food and service and ambience all need a lot of improvement if they want to see any returning customers. I for one will not be...