PITA Mediterranean Street Food- Augusta — Restaurant in Augusta

Amazing service and okay food. I'll definitely be back.

I came here today around 1pm for lunch. I was pretty excited to check this place out because I love Mediterranean food and there aren't many options for good Mediterranean food in Augusta.

PROS:

Fantastic customer service. The whole staff welcomes customers into the restaurant. The cashier has a good grasp of the menu; he made great recommendations and answered all of the questions I had about the menu and dishes. The manager was very involved. He was walking from table to table, making sure all the customers were happy, helping the kitchen staff, and he was helping run food to tables.

Reasonable prices. A street pita, which comes with the sandwich and a side, ranges from $8.45-8.95. Appetizers were also decently priced from $4.99-6.25. A street pita with its side is definitely enough food for one person. But, there are so many options that you'll probably be ordering more than a street pita.

CONS:

Slow cook time. It took just over 20 minutes for my food to be prepared. The restaurant was pretty busy but I still expected my food to come out a little bit faster. I'm assuming the kitchen was backed up since the restaurant is still relatively new and trying to get into a good rhythm.

The preparation of the food: I had the falafel appetizer, a side of baba ghanoush, and a the chicken shawarma street pita. For the falafel and the street pita, the flavor was all there! I really enjoyed the way those two dishes tasted. However, I took my food to go, and the falafel was plated on a bed of lettuce and other vegetables and covered with sauce. By the time I got home (an 8 minute drive) the falafel was soggy. Falafel is supposed to be crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. Also, one of my falafel was cut in half and re-fried so it was pretty over cooked. I think I would have liked the dish a lot more if the lettuce bed wasn't so wet and if the sauce came on the side; the falafel would have stayed crispy.

The chicken shawarma pita tasted great too. The chicken was well seasoned and it's cooked on a vertical, rotating broiler which is pretty traditional for this kind of a restaurant. However, the chicken was over-cooked; it was dry and tough. Also, the side of grilled vegetables was a little small and very bland. The vegetables were zucchini and carrots but they weren't seasoned at all. I didn't even taste any salt which is usually the bare minimum. This dish would have been awesome if they had cooked the chicken a little less and if they had seasoned the vegetables a little bit.

I will say that the baba ghanoush was awesome! I love baba ghanoush and PIta's tasted great.

Overall, I was a little bit disappointed with the quality of the food. But, their customer service is awesome and they are a new restaurant so I'm sure they are still working on finding their grove. I will definitely be back and I look forward to trying...

So, I would like to think that I provide pretty fair reviews of restaurants, pointing out both the good and the bad. So here's what I've got about Pita Mediterranean Street Food...

The good: I thought the food was pretty good at this place. I had the gyro pita and Greek fries. I planned to order the gyro platter but right as I was ordering, the cook said they were all out of rice.... an hour before closing? I suppose it happens. Anyway, some of the other reviews say the food here is not very good, but I feel like you have to manage your expectations. When I'm eating at a chain Greek restaurant in Georgia, the expectations aren't very high, but despite this I thought the food was well prepared, looked appealing, and tasted great. If you want authentic Greek food, go to Greece. If you are stuck in Georgia, this place is a worthy substitute.

The bad: 3 months ago you received a review in which somebody pointed out all the flies, an open back door, and mess all over the table closest to the beverage machine. Your response was that you had pest control checking out the flies which was why the back door was open. You responded to the complaints about the messy table and said you would talk to your employees to clean up the employee table. You shouldn't have an employee table. If your employees need somewhere to put personal items you should provide them a space separate from the dining area. Otherwise you end up with the situation I got to experience today, which needless to say was memorable. Your employee table had various personal items on the top to include car keys and an uneaten tray of food, but what was especially memorable was the pile of clothes tossed on top of a pair of shoes on the floor in front of the table. The capstone of this pile was what appeared to be somebody's dirty underwear covered in flies. You know, the ones that you had pest control checking out 3 months ago? They were swarming all over the dirty underwear. I didn't get too close, but I'm pretty sure I saw skid marks.

The food was worth five stars. The service was average, so three stars. The environment and experience dragged the whole thing down. You really need to work on that. No matter where you go, if the employees are forced to spend their break time in the dining room, it looks bad to...

When I first found the Pita, I was extremely excited for the flavorful experience. I would drive almost an hour to shop in the local area and eat at this place. Well today changed everything!!!! Our total bill came to $34 and some change..... Mind you for salads. Our salads, ( there were two of us) the chicken was was literally burnt meat- black and charred. It is my understanding that the owner Ben was the cook and he was the one that burned the meat. We returned the salad, they remade the salad, this time the salad did not look like the original salad that we ordered. The salad was full of spinach when the salad was supposed to be a spring mix. So, I returned the second time and ask them why the salad looked different and had so much spinach. I was then told that they ran out of salad and that's all they had. Never once, did they ask the customer, did we mind having more spinach and very little salad. Not to mention, they're right next door to a grocery store and could have gotten the mixed salad that they needed to fulfill their orders. The service is trash. The workers were rolling their eyes, very disrespectful and inappropriate. Ben's husky, massively overweight obese, girlfriend was in the restaurant at the time and became involved in our conversation. Her behavior was certainly that of a " "Karen". Totally unwarrant, she did not have enough common sense, to mind her own business. At the same time, Ben and his husky girlfriend, were giving us hillbilly vibes. Very low vibrations. Not to mention and this is the first time that I noticed, the kitchen was a mess. Food all over the floor, counters were not cleaned off and even some of the tables, in the dining area had leftover food; from other people that had come and ate. Perhaps, the Health Department, will give them a wake up call. We're done with this place. The Pita has become Pitiful today. I have no intentions of ever supporting...