Superbaba (Victoria) — Restaurant in Victoria

Good Food. Poor Service. Bad Experience. Over 2 years I have eaten at Superbaba once or twice per week. My usual order was either a Chicken Wrap with sub tomatoes instead of radishes and tahini instead of mayo, or the Hummas and Pita combo. Good food but the price is ever increasing and the portions have become smaller. On several occasions I would ask for a bit more hummas since the menu states 5oz, but the portion given would only barely half fill a 7oz container. I would also request my pita to be toasted crispy just as it is whenever I order the califlower or butternut squash soup.

A few times my chicken wrap order was incorrect either missing the subbed tomatoes that I requested, or made without french fries or without cabbage. Whenever I would mention the error, the staff were good to remake my order.

On one occasion I ordered 5x Hummas with Pita "toasted". When I picked up the order and checked it, 3 of the 5 hummas containers were less than half full and none of the pitas were toasted. I asked the hostess if I could have some more hummas and she obliged. When I pointed out that the pita was not toasted she said "we don't toast pita". I explained that the soup comes with toasted pitas and that its usually not a problem when I make this request. She went to get a kitchen staff member who came over to tell me "next time you want your pita toasted you should request it when you place the order" - which I did. I left with my food and called back requesting to speak with the manager. I explained the situation and described the fibbing and manipulation of the hostess. The hostess came on the line and apologized profusely offering to buy me my next order. I accepted her apology and said it wasnt necessary but she insisted.

After this incident I often found that some of the staff were quite cold and not very friendly to me. Also, not long after there was a sign in the window showing support for an group involved in illegal activity. I messaged the business to express my distaste for the controversial message and stated that they would no longer get my business if they choose to display support for groups who partake in illegal activity. The owner appologized. The sign was removed.

With the pandemic mostly behind us I decided to order a chicken wrap today to support local business as I hadn't ordered for some time. I was surprised when the hostess told me that I have been banned from the restaurant. I messaged the owner who told me that the staff said that I was "aggressive" and that I "raised my voice". This was obviously a false accusation since I have never behaved in such a way at Superbaba, nor have I ever once been asked to leave.

It seems that when a frequent customer takes the time to point out occasional mistakes on their orders, being shorted on quantities, offensive political views on display in the window, and general unfriendly and snarky attitude of some staff, the solution is to blame the customer with false accusations and ban them from the restaurant.

The food is pretty good but the poor customer service, ever increasing prices, and ever shrinking portions seriously devalue the overall experience.

Please look for other reviews where the owner responds with false accusations towards the customer in response to negative reviews. I have never once raised my voice or been rude to the staff. I have never made any negative comments about aboriginals. The owner propogates lies in an attempt to discredit legitimate complaints about...

Update: Tried again and it was back to normal! Everything was great. Must have just had bad luck last time. Here’s the old review for posterity…

Very bummed to be sharing a poor review of this place, but thought it was important to post in hopes they do some course correction.

I've been eating here once every couple of months for years, but my order last night was just... bad. I ordered two chicken wraps (one spicy, one not), fries, and pita chips.

The chicken wraps both seemed to be using a new (less good) wrap -- is it whole wheat now? Just cheaper? The wrap was also closed on top (whereas it used to be open on one end), so it had less volume inside and therefore wasn't as filling as normal. Some fillings were almost totally missing (basically no turnip/fries/etc. inside), and the stuff that was inside was way off: the spicy one only had a ton of hot sauce but none of the other normal flavours in there to match. So it was just pure hot sauce in the wrap. The chicken chunks themselves used to be smaller and have more crispy/flavourful surface area, but this time it was just giant chicken thigh hunks (including some gristle), so the chicken itself was also different -- much worse, in my opinion. It amounted to two bad wraps stuffed with almost 100% chicken and covered in hot sauce. Nothing special at all -- totally below average.

The bag of fries was a generous portion size, but the quality was terrible. Every fry was way overdone. They were all deep brown and way too crispy, which is a big departure from their normal quality. The oil tasted old, too. Same story with the pita chips. All overcooked. We ended up throwing out the majority of the fries and almost all of the pita chips. Really disappointing to spend a bunch of money and then feel compelled to just toss most of the meal.

The only thing that met my expectations from previous visits was the garlic mayo, which was still awesome. But when you've tossed out all the fries to eat it with, it doesn't do much good!

I'd no longer recommend people to eat here based on this order. It's not like just one thing was off -- everything in the order was significantly worse than what I'm used to. I'll probably try once more at some point in a few months, but if it's anywhere near this experience I won't be going back.

I don't know if this is a staff/costing/management/training change, but almost everything in the order was way below standards from my previous visits. This level of quality was way below what it used to be. I was really disappointed.

Please get back to the consistent quality you used to have! I'm sad to have lost one of my go-to places...

Since Superbaba is new, and since its pre-opening marketing campaign used the slogan "Not Another Tacofino," I expected an exciting culinary experience that aimed to differentiate itself from the standard burger joints, taquerias, Noodle Boxes and other "street food" purveyors in Victoria. No such luck. It was so mediocre that I don't expect to return. The premise is a good one, if not original (Yalla is a far tastier and better conceptualized example of the falafel genre). The idea is to serve healthy food that is well prepared and not a standard variation on fast food. But at Superbaba, almost nothing was really tasty or well made. Here is my list of what's not working. Maybe the owners will take notice and boost the culinary side of their restaurant over time.

Rice and lentils are bland and cold Cucumber salad is bland Felafel is mediocre Humus is good, but not great We were told lactose has "cooked off" in yogurt-marinated chicken dish, without any basis Steak is tough and over-seasoned The space is supernoisy with superbad acoustics

On the positive side, the servers are very nice and accommodating, and the place is fine for families with small kids, if you can take the noise and don't have high expectations...