Flying Star Cafe — Restaurant in Albuquerque

Expect subpar if you have dietary constrictions.

No doubt, the quality of service at Flying Star has declined over the years. It’s expected that they will always get something wrong with your order on any given visit. If you ask for bacon on the side, they’ll most likely put it on top. If sandwich bread is requested to be dry, they will usually butter fry it regardless. One time, I actually found a large piece of PLASTIC WRAP in my salad.

It seems like they’ll hire just about anyone regardless of if they know how to cook, let alone listen to instruction. But still, they’ve always struck me as a fundamentally health-conscious restaurant. They emphasize vegan, vegetarian, grass-fed, free-range, non-GMO… etc. options on their menu.

So of course, being vegan, I assumed they’d be able to accommodate my dietary needs. A friend of mine recommended to me the “Unchicken Burger” which is clearly labeled “VEGAN” on the menu. Upon inquiring about the kind of oil it’s cooked in, the manager sheepishly informed me that even the vegan burgers are cooked on the SAME grill with the meats. I told him this wouldn’t be consistent with my plant-based diet, to which he replied there’s really nothing he can do.

I ordered the Buddha bowl instead. Always a safe choice, right? The nice clerk told me the tofu is grilled with the meats (a typical procedure in their kitchen), so she put in special directions to prepare my tofu vegan. (Side note: Flying Star charges $4 for tofu on top of already overpriced dishes.) You could imagine I was frustrated when my buddha bowl came and the waitress (again sheepishly) told me my tofu was cooked in BUTTER. I hate wasting food, so I was prepared to separate the tofu and just eat the veggies and rice. But the tofu wasn’t just “cooked” in the butter. It was saturated and dripping with it, almost like it had been marinated in it. The butter was all over the rest of the dish. GROSS.

Even for dairy and meat eaters, who want to consume that much grease on vegetables and rice? At this point, I was upset and kind of baffled at the stupidity of these kitchen workers, and possibly lack of communication between the clerks and the cooks. The manager then informed me that his kitchen staff likely didn’t know the difference between “vegetarian” and “vegan,” which is NOT an excuse! Tofu cooked with meat is neither vegan NOR vegetarian. If a dish is clearly labeled “vegan” on the menu, I expect a vegan dish. Making a gesture to calm me down or reassure me, the manager said to me, “Don’t worry, ma’am. You’re not the first person this has happened to.” This statement only caused me to wonder the reason WHY this recurring issue had been left unresolved! This incident was no one-time error. This happened out of pure negligence and carelessness, and will surely happen again. This experience makes me question any of the claims Flying Star makes about their ingredients, and what I have unknowingly consumed on my many visits to their various locations. It’s only a matter of time before someone with a dairy intolerance eats something that’s supposedly “dairy-free” or someone with celiac eats something contaminated with gluten and Flying Star will have a lawsuit on...

I went here with a group of about 10 the evening of Thursday, May 2. It's counter service, so being with a group is irrelevant other than we were all sharing a table on the lovely patio. I stood in line about 15 minutes to order an iced tea. I'd considered ordering dinner, but not after that level of poor service. There were only four people ahead of me. Three point of sale terminals and no one taking orders is ridiculous. One person in our party paid and placed an order and it just never arrived. He waited, and waited, and he even had to (loudly) flag down an employee to ask about it. The employee said he would check and just never came back. The order never arrived. It became a joke at our table, how long before the order would show up? Answer: NEVER. Only when he requested a refund, did the employee actually try to do something. The same employee was seen standing in the middle of the patio with someone's order, just clueless, then took it back inside. Later, it was delivered to another diner in our group. When an order is placed, diners are given an order number sign to place on the table. The owner of this business needs to get back in touch with running the place. It was absolutely terribly run. A brief review of owner responses to poor reviews on Google seems to be a cut and paste of the same apology. How about fixing it. I know a lot of people who are looking for work. Maybe hire some senior citizens who are applying at...

The waiter and bussers at this flying star are undertrained in common sense on when to approach a table or not, and how many times to frequent a table and interrupt a person. If a person is reading, or has headphones on and is obviously engaged in focusing on their business, and the food/tray is near them, no, they dont need service. If a table has a tray and dishes that are obviously in front of the customer, dont remove it on your own accord without asking. And keep earbuds out so that when a customer responds, “im not done with that, and you continue to dump what they were still using or planning to use, and the customer has to yell frantically “HEY! I AM NOT DONE WITH THAT, CAN YOU REPLACE IT NOW?” And they bring back what they touched and put it back infront of you even though you may not know whether they just touched trash and now it has remnants of trash on your now possibly contaminated edible item. Idiots work here. Not sure if you can help those who are ignorant on this level. Bussing and waiting are simple jobs when taught correctly and when intelligent people work those positions. But it takes thinking and foresight and knowledge applied. It was aggravating and irritating after the 6th time being bothered in a 2 hr time frame and accosted focus and joy of enjoying a single...