Falafel Sababa — Restaurant in Berlin

Good food, terrible service.

Tonight's anecdote perfectly encapsulates the hopeless incompetence I have seen on display here in the ~5 times I've visited. This post might seem patronizing but I honestly don't get the impression the people who work there have any clue what good service looks like. Consider this your primer course.

I ordered food on the website's online portal, 2x Iranian Love Bomb with ground meat over mejadra. Order accepted, pick up time given: 21:05. When I arrived at 21:10, I was informed that they had run out of majadra. I asked why they hadn't called me to figure out a replacement--the waiter's reply was that they were "too busy." I was offered couscous as a replacement and told it would "take no time to plate." Well, it took 15 minutes to get out of there after that. When I got home, I found that I had received the Iranian Love Bomb...over mejadra!? (But the meat was missing!)

Point #1: You need to improve communication between the kitchen and the front of house. Apparently it was meat you had run out of, not mejadra. Point #2: If you have run out of something in an online order, and you're "too busy" to call that customer, you need to make a call on the replacement. If you were actually missing mejadra, you should have plated it over couscous and added something extra (side of hummus?) so that when I came in, my food was ready and I got some sort of compensation for your having run out of what I ordered. Don't you see that making no decision and delaying the food by 20 minutes was the worst possible outcome...

In Berlin, you can have high standards for some things and more forgiving for others. In Berlin, the Middle East is about as represented as blondes on Iceland's Miss iceland pageant. So the standards are high here. Sababa does many things right. The falafel is small but very satisfying; the eggplant is generous, cooked well, but a bit thin on the smokiness that delayed service can bring. The hummus is decent, though the salad is rudimentary. The bread is about 12 hours old and served as cold as a corpses hand after the same delay. The service, while friendly, is a little random. For some reason, yoghurt drinks or any Middle Eastern drinks are relinquished to oblivion on the very limited menu. This is a good eating place, and the prices are reasonable for chic prenzlauerberg. The place itself is about as well cared for as a convicted thief in Mogadishu. It wouldn't take much to make it...

Found this place while looking for a quick bite. I stepped inside to order from the counter like any falafel place, but I was mistaken. The waiter welcomed us and guided us to have a seat to order. It was a bit unexpected but quickly realised it's a restaurant, not a regular imbiss 😅

Ordered a falafel plate for two. The plate has a base made with creamy hummu sand and some salad on the side. Falafels were smaller than usual, but there was a lot of falafel on our plate (pun intended 😬). Everything was yummy, especially the star of the plate, falafel. It was super crispy outside and soft inside. Not mushy.

Inside is small, but there are a lot of tables outside. The staff is friendly and attentive. Servis was quick.

Long story short, it was unexpectedly good. I'll be definetely coming again for those...