Chaikhana — Restaurant in Billings

I didn’t actually come in to eat. In my spare time I’ve been picking up some door dash shifts. Tonight I had a dash that sent me to this restaurant. I hen I first walked in I was confused because there literally was not a single customer in the restaurant. It also stunk of nasty skunky weed.

I walked to the register to talk to the guy there. I thought there was a guy in line in front of me but it turned out to be the guys buddy and they needed to wrap up their conversation. Not a big deal.

He finally asks me if he can help me. I tell him I’m there picking up a DoorDash and tell him the woman’s name. He turns around and walks upstairs to what appears to be a staff meeting, and doesn’t say anything else to me. A few minutes later a girl comes down the stairs and tells me that “they are finding my order right now, it’ll be just a few minutes”. I didn’t realize when she said find your order that she meant it literally.

So I started getting annoyed because no one from the little pow wow going on upstairs comes down or does anything to indicate that they were trying to find my order.

A few minutes pass by and another girl comes down from the meeting and asks me if she can help me. I tell her the same information again. She immediately responds and says, “I don’t know anything about that, I don’t do those orders you’re going to have to ask someone else”. So I finally asked her if it was being worked on or if she knew anything at all.

She then proceeds to call the original guy back downstairs to see if he can help. He comes over and again asks me for all the same information. This time he actually goes into the kitchen. He comes back out and tells me that they “couldn’t see it on the screen” and that they were working on it right now.

It’s extremely frustrating as a door dasher because between the amount of time I waited and ultimately the tip that I lost because the order was taking too long and was reassigned so it ended up costing me over $20. That might not sound like a lot, but that ended up taking it from a somewhat average night to a bad one for me.

I don’t even know how the food is there, but just based on that service I won’t go back there. Not to eat, and certainly not to waste my time door dashing. And honestly considering that the place was empty at 9 on a Friday night, and considering that it only has a 3.5 star rating on door dash, and that no one has ever recommended this place to me, and that I had never even heard of it before going in there tonight, it seems pretty clear that there are a lot of bad experiences happening at this place. Very disappointing and...

So there’s a lot to talk about here. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, I’m not a local and was visiting from Bozeman. But judging from the other recent reviews something’s clearly changed recently.

Food: The food was amazing and the chef was awesome. Came with my dad and we got the tea, chicken kebab, beef kebab, Turkish soup, and Greek salad . All of it was great.

Service: What on earth is going on? The waitress handed us our menu, took our order, and then… disappeared? Literally walked out of the restaurant to talk to some randos on the street. Never handed us silverware, nothing. Mind you the only other person working is the chef.

She came back, served us the kebabs, and continued to talk to her buddies which are now in the restaurant. A few minutes later, the chef himself served us the greek salad while she continued talking with friends or whatever. He was also serving the only other customer, which slowed down the service significantly

She only appeared again when it was time to pay. Just tip the chef directly. He’s doing 99% of the work.

I get that places are understaffed. But the owner needs to be aware his chef is getting screwed over and it’s impacting his business. Not to mention the server just hanging out with buds...

Edit to restaurant reply: You guys are just making excuses, you want the perfect food to compare yours to? I never said I’ve had a perfect version of anything. I only said yours was incredibly subpar. This is the opinion of 4 people who ate tonight, collectively. You may place the blame aside and deny all you want, but this was not just one person’s complaint. It’s a simple review, take it how you want but we won’t be back nor will we recommend you for your food or attitude.

Got their food delivered, delivery was not the problem though. First off, everything was cold but it was delivered within 10 minutes from the restaurant. The baklava is not even baklava.. it’s stale, mushy, there’s no honey in it (it’s not even sweet) and has no flavor. I’ve had baklava many times, I have no idea what this thing would even be called other than sad. My kebab meal (also cold) was terrible. Flavorless, the meat was tough, the salsa was straight out of a Pace bottle. The sambusa and shawarma were okay, but also cold. I was super excited when I saw a restaurant with this type of food here in Billings but I won’t order...