Tahini's — Restaurant in Ottawa

After a great experience ordering some food via Uber Eats with a coworker and having it delivered to my work, I figured I'd introduce my family to the restaurant by ordering a few of the daily deal Habibi bowls.

I got to the restaurant shortly after 4:00pm with my daughter and since it was my first time coming to the store, I saw the pretty obvious sign to "order here" hanging above the cash register and walked over there. 2 employees looked really busy preparing meals so I patiently waited even though neither of them made eye contact or acknowledged my existence while waiting at the cash.... After at least 5 mins of waiting at the cash, one of the employees told me to go order at the machine. I acknowledged him and told him I hadn't noticed those when I came in (the giant order here sign is way more obvious) but nevertheless I obliged and then spent the next few mins trying to figure out how to order the daily deal on the machine.... After trying different menus and options, I couldn't figure it out and asked one of your employees who still wasn't making eye contact with me how to order the daily deal on the computer to which he said that had to be done at the cash..... At this point I was pretty frustrated and told him why would he have instructed me to go order at the machine then in the first place when I was already at the cash.

I started walking to the cash before realizing that this kind of poor customer service shouldn't be rewarded and decided I'd take my business elsewhere....

I emailed the franchise to let them know about my complaint but after a few weeks of no response, posting this review so others can avoid the same...

As someone who likes to indulge in shawarma from time to time, the newly opened Tahini’s branch in herongate plaza seemed a good place to order takeout on a Saturday night.

We ordered the Royal Shawarma Tray, and at a staggering price of $83.99, we expected a large quantity of high quality food.

Upon trying the variety of small wraps, something came off as completely wrong instantly. The outlandish flavors of shawarma tasted just as wild as their names, being either very bland or too gimmicky. The jerk chicken shawarma tasted of toothpaste (?), the butter chicken shawarma was less a flavor of shawarma and more so tasteless butter chicken wrapped in old bread, the original was plain bland and tasted like an amalgamation of ingredients rather than a well structured shawarma, and the other flavours were too tasteless to be worth mentioning.

If you’re in Ottawa searching for good shawarma, stick to your roots and head to shawarma palace rather than this needlessly zany, unorthodox chain. When your food that you specialize in tastes no better (if not worse) than low effort homemade shawarma, there is a huge problem. Hell, had one given me their wraps I wouldn’t know it was shawarma in the first place; Tahini’s is so far gone I can’t tell what they’re trying to be. Huge disappointment, avoid this chain...

The reason I am only giving a 2 star review is because, although the food was good (even cold), it wasn't enough to make up for the bad experience.

I ordered for the website for delivery at 7:00pm. All was smooth. I got a confirmation email stating delivery would be completed at 7:45pm. At 8:15 our food hadn't been delivered, nobody had contacted us about it and although a phone number is listed, nobody picked up. My husband had to go to the restaurant to see what was happening at 8:30pm. When he got there he was told they don't do delivery and to contact the franchise for a refund because I shouldn't have been able to put my order through at all. They did however, make the food and leave it on the counter. I dont know how long it was sitting out but it was cold. I guess they were just hoping that someone would eventually come get it? They had all my information including an email and phone number but never once tried to call to give us a heads up about the situation.

Our car is in the garage getting work done and with a newborn we had decided to treat ourselves. Definitely not the kind of night we were expecting. Be warned, don't even think about ordering for delivery even though it...