Basmah — Restaurant in Berlin

We came here one week ago, and had a horrendous experience thanks to a truly disturbed employee. I hope the owner of Basmah reads the reviews, and handles this problem. This was at 16:30 on Wednesday the 13th September 2023.

We were extremely hungry from a long day and the place was very quiet. We thought “Great! We’ll have a great feast, rest and we won’t even have to deal with the usual crowdedness”. Well to our shock, our visit ended already in 2 minutes.

We went up to the counter and made this simple request: “Zwei Teller. Einmal mit Falafel & Halloumi. Einmal mit Chicken, Halloumi & Magali”. That’s it. Instead of registering this super simple and clearly expressed request, the employee decided to engage in the world’s most pathetic & useless power trip.

First, he shouted at us “No Falafel Halloumi!!” and we’re like “Okay… Gibt’s nicht mehr?”. He continues, “No! No! No Falafel Halloumi Teller, it’s Basmah Teller!!!”. “Alles klar… Dann bitte einmal Basmah Teller, und noch ein Chicken, Halloumi & Magali”. At this point this insane person takes a step back to look at us with the most disgusted and contemptuous look on his face, mumbling (swearing?) to himself under his breath. Surprised and really confused, we tried to understand what the hell was happening. My friend turns to me and says “Maybe they don’t have any Magali left”, I look over and yes the only vegetable I can see from the counter is fried carrots. As I attempted to say “Oh kein Magali mehr? Kein Problem”, he goes “Was!!Sandwich?!“, “Ne, ich möchte doch einen Teller” (trying to order now for the 3rd time). This maniac then uses this last opportunity to get even more aggressive, and shouts at us declaring that all platters come with Magali.

I can’t forget the look of pure disgust on his face, how he glared at us looking up and down and how unnecessary it was. Although we were in complete shock, we thankfully managed to assess the situation and left before we got even more uncomfortable.

I’m sad to say that we won’t be coming back if this behavior is tolerated or normalized at Basmah. We’ve been eating here for years and we really hope they can improve...

Quick, open late, filling, I guess it would taste better after a pub crawl at 2 in the morning, unfortunately I was sober. Falafel and aubergine paste were really nice (I added an extra star for these), the rest was greasy, quite tasteless, peanut sauce was ok. The falafel and tofu plate was €6, it was quite big and the late opening hours justify the price I guess. It's great that they have real plates and cutlery, less rubbish = awesome. Friendly staff. It's good that they have toilet although I'm not sure if I stayed to eat if I saw the toilet first. Dirty and doesn't lock which makes it tricky to use,...

This place was good for me but for others that are more OCD need clean facility (don't come here). The staff don't wash their hands and handles the money at the same time preparing your food. If you are okay with more street food style, it is yummy. I had the falafel + Hallumi terller for 6Euro it was really good - almost all fried but nevertheless tasty. I would def come back probably with a blindfold. The sauces like everybody says is really good and different. Also nobody wears masks (inkl. the customers). Come here but like i said if you are looking for nice hygiene this is...