Jerusalem Express Restaurants — Restaurant in Jalisco

If you're like me and have lived in New York for many years, you may associate shawarmas with late-night drunk food. This was one of the reasons why I hesitated to visit this place at first, despite it being highly recommended as one of the best restaurants in PV for vegans.

Being a vegan myself, I ordered the falafel sandwich and watched Sammy, the owner, cook everything from scratch in his one-person kitchen. To be honest, my expectations were low because all the falafel I've had in the U.S. have been bland and dry, but was I blown away by this one. Sammy’s falafel sandwich is a warm, hearty, comforting meal packed with flavor. The falafel is moist and well-seasoned, the garlic sauce and hummus do well to bring out the flavors of the falafel, and the warm pita wraps everything together like a hug.

I've had the pleasure of getting to know Sammy as a person. We talked all about his passion for getting people healthy. Having not had the most healthy lifestyle when he was younger, Sammy is very conscious about food and nutrition. He does marathon trainings on the side and uses the menu as a way to play around with food to see what types of food can help sustain one's energy without any spikes or crashes. This is food that not only tastes delicious and keeps you feeling full but also gives you enough energy for the whole day. My favorite thing about Sammy's food is that it does not create gut inflammation, which means I can eat here every day without any digestive problems, and believe it or not, that is hard to find here.

One of the things I love about this place is that you can see all the spices he uses on the wall behind the counter, which makes the food feel so much homier. This is the what a home-cooked meal tastes like. As a health-conscious person myself, I prefer to eat foods like this more than foods that get marketed as "healthy" such as smoothie bowls and salads because these traditional recipes carry the wisdoms of people who understood how to heal the body with food and only food.

Pictured: Vegan soup (not on the menu but you can order) Kitchen with wall of spices Falafel plate Oatmeal pancakes that Sammy made for me one day because he was making breakfast for himself and generously asked if I wanted any (unfortunately, I don't think this is available to be ordered, but you...

The cafe styled restaurant itself was relatively quiet with a couple of customers. The owner has a local apprentice that does a lot of the food prep. I was immediately greeted and shown the menu. I ordered a lamb pita sandwich. You are actually feet away from the food being prepared which is nice because you get to see if the ingredients are fresh and well prepared, along with determining if they know what they are doing. Instead of it being slices of lamb it is these balls of pressed meat that gets put on the grill and pressed down like patties. Hummus placed on both sides of the pita with the fresh chopped veggies and then the white sauce. Like I previously stated food preparation you can see. I should have known from pressed meat patties that this was not going to be a good experience. The hummus was the worst I have ever tasted which is strange because typically Jewish food is very flavorful. I digress...the best thing about the pita was the bread and veggies. The taste overall was awful. The "meat" did not taste like lamb but more of a dried out veggie patty. I took one bite and had to spit it out. The smell that illuminated from the foil wrapped sandwich permeated the air for hours. I had to burn candles for several hours. Nice try but maybe real lamb is hard to come by in Mexico...find a different protein or stick...

Seeing all the positive reviews, I was very disappointed by my experience. I felt compelled to write a review, to give others notice that the food quality is very mixed here. It can be great (as indicated by most of the reviews) or not (in my case).

I ordered the falafel plate for 135 pesos. Coming from NYC, I've had great falafels for $5 usd so I was hopeful. The falafel was small and burnt. There was maybe a pea size of real falafel in the middle of the burnt outside crust. Since I had a takeaway order, I couldn't do anything about it. But as a chef/cook, you should know when you've burnt something (which it was obvious), you should not serve it. Perhaps it was the assistant and not the owner but the quality of food needs to be reviewed.

Everything else in the plate was given in small portions (2 Tablespoons worth about). The hummus didn't taste like hummus I've had before. And there was hardly any couscous in the tabbouleh. The kebab my friend ordered also didn't taste like any kebab I've had before--the flavor was definitely lacking.

My advice: Don't take orders to go. And prepare to be underwhelmed, just in case you go there on a bad day.

3 stars for effort. The rest of the food wasn't terrible. The service wasn't terrible (but not...