Kabab House — Restaurant in Carnegie

On the spur of the moment, we decided to go out to dinner with another couple and landed on this place. Good choice! While parking is a problem in Carnegie these days, we eventually made it to the restaurant. We called ahead to make a reservation, only to find the place completely empty... So, even though we were a few minutes late, it was not a problem.

Our waiter was excellent. While not Afghani, he was knowledgeable and able to explain the menu and the differences between the various dishes and methods of preparation. He also guided us in the selection of what to get to the most economical way to sample the most things given our party size. That was how we ended up with a Family Combo with additional skewers. We were happy for his guidance and showed our appreciation at the end of the meal!

The food arrived in a reasonable amount of time. First to arrive were the salads. As you have seen above, I only gave the restaurant a four star rating and one of the reasons for not giving them a five star rating is the salad. I expected more than some lettuce, two cucumber slices, and a tomato slice in a small paper plate. The other reason why the rating is only four stars is that we received paper plates and plastic forks and knives. With some of the meat chunks, the plastic knives were not really up to the challenge and paper plates and plastic cutlery really detracted from the experience.

Luckily, the next courses made up for this. The appetizers that came next - the real Afghani ones! - were absolutely great. Many was a steamed dumpling filled with a mixture of ground beef and lentils and very flavorful. Burani Badanjan was a creamy dreamy eggplant dish that had us swooning with delight. And finally, we got the Mantu which was a bread stuffed with a combination of potatoes and leeks which reminded us a lot of a Chinese Scallion Pancake in looks and consistency.

Almost at the same time as the appetizers, the main dishes came out (why?). We got a huge platter filled with rice, marinated onions and sic different kebabs, and a separate (paper) plate with more rice, onion, and two more lamb kebabs. Also, a basket of bread. The table was overflowing with stuff!

Each of the chicken, beef, and lamb, kebabs were cooked perfectly. They were very well seasoned and flavored. There are three sauces available on the table ( a White, Cilantro, and Hot) but we only tried them to see what they are - they were absolutely not needed for the food. Another low point though, was the bread. The waiter called it a Naan, but it's different than the Indian version. This one was very dry and doughy and was not particularly good. We were actually quite disappointed by it. Compared the level of flavors of all the other dishes that rated a 10 on a 1 to 10 scale, the bread would rate a 2.

Overall, great food. And, with a few tweaks, I would gladly increase the overall rating to a five star rating! The waiter was a delight. The only other oddity was that in the end, we kept waiting for the check and eventually flagged him down (remember, we were the only ones there!) and he told us we had to come over to the counter to pay. Hmmm.. Anyway, that's when we also found out how affordable...

I'm honestly not sure how or why this place is reviewed so high. It fooled us, that's for sure. I hope this review helps dismay the seemingly fake 5 star reviews. Because I don't know how this can be anything above a 1 after what my girlfriend and I experienced.

My girlfriend has wanted to try this place for a while so we were excited to finally try it. We get there, and get greeted by a customer, but no one who works there. Keep in mind, that's the only customer in there. Odd. It was freezing cold in there, no music, odd atmosphere, just very cold all around. We take our order and the girl at the counter was very unfriendly and again, cold. Got annoyed when we said it was for here to dine in. There was no description of any platters, so we were kinda clueless what else came with it? Finally after 15 mins of waiting, we get the wettest, not dressed salads I've had in my life. Gross. We get handed sauces for the salad, one being ketchup? Very odd. And yet, we still haven't received our drinks.

Finally after 15 more minutes we receive our drinks we ordered now at this rate, 30 minutes later. Again, little to no customers in the restaurant. Just annoyed Grubhub drivers that seemingly have been waiting just as long for food as us. Can't blame them!

Finally, after another 30 minutes we receive our platters. That takes us to one hour total for waiting for our food. Which are just the meat, rice and red onion garnish. That's it? For that price? Not even bread!? Our food was still decent, but not worth the price or wait. And we got a very poor "apology" for the wait.

Of course we have to walk up to pay, and the cashier again is super cold and unfriendly.

Overall not a great place. Not worth your time, money or appetite. Avoid...

The food is great but unfortunately their customer service is very bad. We ordered food for 20 people for a birthday party. We wanted to customize our order and called them twice to reconfirm so they don’t mess up and even paid $20 extra as they demanded. In short we spend over $230 which isn’t a small amount.

They not only messed up the order by not providing what was asked for they also provided less food. They only provided two 1/2 trays but when I called and told them my order was not correct they apologized first and said they would correct it. I said I am far and cannot come over now and they said we can stop by later in the week and they will provide us a platter to compensate as they messed up the order.

I called after 4 days to place a order and the person on the phone refused and said they did not promise anything like that and they said they cannot do anything.

In short, their food is good but their customer service was very disappointing and we felt very disappointed. It is not about the money but I wanted to point this out to others in case you run into a...