Charcoal Lebanese Grill — Restaurant in London

Born & bred Lebanese person, here's my feedback based on my lunch last week; each category rated out of 5 stars: [Hygiene: ✮✮✮✮] Place seems clean and maintained well

[Freshness: ✮✮✮] Ingredients mostly fresh. (tomatoes were a bit too soft and mushy so might have been better if they were more fresh)

[Authenticity: ✮] This is what lowered the overall average rating for me. If they advertised their cuisine as anything "except" Lebanese i would have turned a blind eye since this is false-advertising. The food (especially Shawarma sandwiches) does not even remotely taste Lebanese or anywhere from the Levant or wider-Arabia for that matter. It tasted more like Turkish or Pakistani variants of Shawarma. The best comparison i can give is if someone takes Chinese noodles and puts ketchup on top and calls it 'Spaghetti Bolognese'. They might look slightly similar in texture but remarkably different.

Lebanese shawarma does not use Red Cabbage/Chilli Sauce/Pickled Chili Peppers/red onions - not to even mention the missing ingredients.

I've tried to be fair and balanced in my review, others may not in the future. If Arabs or Lebanese people ordered the food you might get a lot of negative feedback. I advise changing the name of either the restaurant or give the dishes different names (e.g. instead of shawarma call it donner wrap) or something similar to avoid...

I've been here a couple of times and not been disapointed by the taste, quality, quantity or price. All good and fresh with a good choice of meats and salads/vegetable and suace accompaniments. A very warm welcome, and free parking (a real gift in that busy highstreet!) to the side and rear of the buildings; just remenber to validate your free parking on the touch-screen pad inside the shop - you will need to remember your Reg. when you go in. Thank you for your...

The food is fine but the service is unbelievably slow. It takes about half an hour for them just to prepare a wrap! This wasn't an isolated incident either. I've visited a total of three times now and it was awful on each occasion. It's three strikes and you're out. For that reason, I wouldn't consider or recommend using this...