House of Mandi - Yemeni Restaurant — Restaurant in Anaheim

TLDR: Drove almost 40 min to restaurant and received entrees an hour later, especially after people, that came half an hour after our order was put in. Nothing was communicated by staff or management about the delay to us. Cancelled some items from our order, thinking we may end up receving it during closing time of the restaurant or maybe even the next day.

Longer version for context:

I am not a person to go and give out a poor review, but I as well experienced something similar to the individual posting the one star review when they experienced bad service at the House of Mandi during lunch hours. Below is the whole picture for potential customers planning to come to The House of Mandi, especially if they are making a trip to try Yemeni food.

I have heard a lot of hype about Yemeni food, I was excited to try food at this establishment with my parents. This review is posted 2 hours into returning from the restaurant, so that clarifies the frustration we experienced during dinner period tonight.

We drove almost 40 minutes to get to the restaurant. We arrived and sat inside the restaurant around 8:35 pm. Being a Saturday night, we were expecting House of Mandi to be busy, and so it was. As we got seated, we realized no menu was given to us. After a brief moment we were greeted by a female server, who kindly showed us the QR code, hidden and faded, on the napkin dispenser. Once we put our order around 8:49 pm, with a male server, different than before, parts of our appetizer showed up. I understand, weekend nights are busy nights, and I understood that it was an honest mistake, but maybe it was too soon for me to forgive early signs of disconnected communication. However, post appetizer, is where the test of patience begins.

We continue to wait and wait as each table that came before us received their appetizer, and shortly their entrees. But things started to look strange when a couple with an infant showed up 30 min after our order was put in, and received their food before us.

We asked one of the servers for an update, and not to our surprise, realized they forgot our order. We ended up cancelling some of the items in our order realizing that it may take even longer for them to bring it out. We officially received our food around 9:47 pm. Not at any moment during this period were we told about the wait time, while we saw patrons that came after us getting their order timely.

That's almost one hour of wait time. What I couldn't make sense of is, how was it possible for them to get out similar and some bigger orders earlier than ours? I would assume that, almost all Mandi dishes have similar components except some variation.

My intention behind this review is not to divert people from this small family run thriving business, or to personally attack the staff, but to highlight the miscommunication between staff and management and lack of some basic professionalism. This may be a strange experience for non Arab or non Arabic speaking individuals like us, compared to their regular majority Arab and Arabic speaking patrons. I hope the managment understands that communicating with your customers, regardless of their background, is key to them coming back.

P.S I did leave a tip for the hardworking staff, and hope they get it. I am hoping that the management and staff learns to communicate better with their non...

Here is thing, it is not easy to find a place that offers good food and good service at the same time, specially small businesses. Maybe you can find both of these in a big company restaurant because they have way higher standards and training, but in a small business it is hard find both at the same time. I have been in this restaurant for a lot of times since it opened few years ago and the last time I went there was about 2 months ago. I can say that the food quality is very consistent, there is no difference when they first open compared to now. However I started to notice the service is getting worse time after time. The restaurant is always busy because the food is good, but I’ll warn you, don’t go there and expect 5 star service, you will still pay a lot of money but it is not for the service. There are 3 kinds of turn over in these small restaurants, the first kind and the rarest one is holding good food and service no matter what even after they build a good customer base The 2nd kind is the one after building a good customer base the food quality go down And the 3rd kind is when the service quality go down and this restaurant is the 3rd kind. When it first opened it was very comfortable place to go get food at for some reason, one of them is not over loading the restaurant and the staff buy placing way more tables and make the restaurant very crowded, 2 feet between tables. Literally I can hear the conversation the next table is having with all the details. The other thing is the price increase, i know inflation is everywhere and everything is more expensive now but come on increase the prices from $23 to $33 for Mindy? That is 30% increase, inflation is 7% by the way. Also, there is this charge that is unfair at all, if the party is 4 people or more than there is 15% service charge, and then another 15% to 20% tip. So literally if the party is 4 or more then the tip “15% service charge” is mandatory and then if I don’t leave another 20% tip I will get looked down at Imagine You go to a restaurant and spend $100 then you will get slapped with $15 mandatory service charges and then another $20 tip and you end up paying $135 This is not the only middle eastern restaurant that charges the service fees but one of them The restaurant have very specific group of people that they serve, the kind that don’t care about the service, don’t care if the restaurant is over filled with people and over crowded with no privacy at all. I know restaurants is not about privacy but when it feels like I literally seating on the same table at other customers because the tables are very close to each other then...

Let’s start with the good… first of all the food was wonderful and beyond good. My family and I loved the food and at first we said this will become our regular go to restaurant for chicken. But as the evening progressed things started to change. First our drinks that we ordered arrived at the end of our meal. We rang the bell and asked the server where are our drinks but it took like 15 mins for them to respond. Then I went to pay the bill and there were issues!!!

First I noticed they charged us for a drink we did not order for like 4-5 dollars. They were able to fix that and take it off the bill. Then I looked at my order for Chapati bread and it was there for 7 dollars on the bill. I opened the menu up and it said 4.95(see picture) I told the cashier and showed him the inconsistency and they tried to say that was the price etc. until I showed them the menu. Then they started saying they source the bread from another place etc. just to make things worse I waited more than 5 mins till somebody more senior came and changed the bill to 2.99 to make me happy. I shrugged and accepted. Only to find out later on when I left the restaurant that they also added 4.99 somewhere else for bread to make it now 8 dollars. Then I looked at the bill again and it showed a 15% service charge. I guess that is ok for a party of 4. Then they turn the pay terminal around which asks me for 20% tip as well. This was totally unrealistic. Asking for 35% tip. The food is great but at over 30 dollars the average plate u should not be asking for a service charge. Whenever I see a service charge I refrain from tipping on principle and let free market economics sort it out. If waiters don’t get a fair share of the service charge they will quit.

Overall again to be fair the food is great and beyond good. The service was horrible and the payment experience made me disgusted. From the fact that there were wrong prices for the food to the fact that they want a service charge and tip totaling over 35%. This underhanded business practice should not be allowed. The restaurant ambience and decoration is not that of a restaurant that charges 30-50 dollars a person. It is more like a cheap cantina kind of feel.

Fix the service. Stop the deceptive billing practices and you have your self a 5 star restaurant.

Also while being ignored and not serviced well during the meal, when it was time to leave we were hounded by the staff to leave a Google review....