The Halal Guys — Restaurant in Costa Mesa

4 visits in the first 10 days, and a total of 8.5 hours in line. Tracking this place for the past 3 months i stalked their progress weekly along with nostalgia for New York trips may have built slightly unrealistic expectations.

My guess is weekdays during lunch will be 45 minute waits for the next few months and dinners will be 1-2 hours with weekends being an additional 50% wait.

What makes the original carts in NY so much better is that the efficiency in which they move through the line. Still being new and having significant waits the delays are in saucing and the chicken adding. Cooking looks good as it’s going on the background, same with the rice and salad parts, but you’ll spend most of your ordering wait for them to add chicken and sauce. I get that many people are new to this, but it doesn’t take that long to ask, answer and sauce your plate. It’s a small place and not ideal for eating in. Clean, new, bright, but not really that inviting while there is a line around the block.

The rice is a little bland, in comparison to their stands in NY (batches are too large, more saffron and less tumeric). The sauce is legit. Like a tangy lemony ranch. Some people say Mayo like, but versatile. When you see how much people use you’ll then understand how much better having THAT much sauce is. The fries are pretty good, the pita is a little off due to the water out here, not as fresh, not as chewy, not as sturdy. The salad is meh, no one is coming here for the salad or tomatoes. The chicken is juicy, the gyro is a little too chopped and overcooked (looks almost like ground beef at this point). If you’ve never had go straight chicken and rice combo. Falafel’s are good, but a little heavy and greasy, needs more herbs too to come out from the heat from frying. What happened to the chicken, lamb AND falafel platter? Guess they don’t offer that here. Fries are ok, wish they were thicker to hold up to the heavy flavors and saucing.

I’ve coined the term “white sauce wasted” where I ask them to cover the entire top with white sauce so I don’t have to order a 2nd packet (I still do). The hot sauce is key though, not to be messed with (a 3/1 ratio of white to red sauce is pretty ideal for flavor), but considering how much white sauce I use that could be misleading. Tell them to not be afraid to cover your pita in sauce too.

The service is good, but efficiency still sucks. It’s not ideal to have tons of meat drying out from overstocking the reserves. Though only temporary the (2 per person) rule is still in effect, but will change soon. If your nice you can get around it, but don’t expect it as I’ve used it, but seen others get turned down. Prices are rising and it’s brick and mortar. Get the packets to go, despite the charge they go great on other things. I’m waiting for an online bulk availability.

Personally I recommend you ditch the salad and tomatoes. Go extra protein on the chicken only. If it’s super busy you might get away with single protein if you hide it with the white sauce and they don’t notice. Your darn right I know and use this trick. Harder to do at the carts. It has a loyal following of people who went to NY and fell in love with it after a late night out. It’s a bit of our In N Out, Mexican burrito, ethnic food eating we do late night in Socal, so if you’ve never had it in NY you won’t really understand eating it, while watching the sun come up after a night out.

Parking sucks and will suck more with them drawing more establishments. They are a little shiesty on the portions unless you go double to hide things like me.

Keys to success: chicken and rice platter (I once asked for just gryo and rice to taste individually and it was pedestrian), extra protein, no salad, no tomatoes, extra extra white sauce to cover the double chicken, 3/1 white to red ratio. It’s easier thank taking a trip to NY, but that’s something I...

"We are different" - After my experience dining here, I can't think of a better phrase to describe Halal Guys. I'm sure this slogan was originally coined to emphasize how Halal Guys is "different" from imitation Halal carts in New York, but I also think it's valid to say that their food is "different" from any type of cuisine in this world.

It's tempting to compare Halal Guys with the Shawarma Palaces of Canada or Arabic fast food joints in Anaheim, but after some thought, I realized it's not reasonable to do so. All of these places can sling a ton of Halal food at reasonably low prices, but Halal Guys serves an especially unique type of New York-style street food, with different food preparation, ingredients, and target customers. It's neither true Middle Eastern nor Mediterranean.

I've never been to the original HG food cart in New York, never eaten American Halal platters before, and always wondered why HG was the talk of the town. I came to satisfy my curiosity. What's so special about HG's food outside of their white sauce? It sounds crazy that a condiment can draw so much attention, as I've never heard of anyone obsess over a particular salsa at any taco truck before (taco trucks would be LA's version of NY's halal carts).

Based on my observations, Halal Guys cooked their marinated gyro meat on the vertical broiler, and then transferred the thinly sliced meat to a grill. No other place I know of does that. The meat had deep savory flavor with extra juiciness from the grease that soaked in from the grill. There were crispy edges on some pieces of the chopped beef gyro as advertised. The meat has distinct beef flavor and tasted nothing like lamb, so I was surprised to have heard people in line talk about the lamb they had a few days ago at HG. After some fact digging, I found out Halal Guys had stopped serving lamb gyro about 10 years ago to cut costs.

I didn't enjoy the chicken as much as the beef gyro meat. Halal Guys' chicken was dark thigh meat with similar texture and flavor to boiled chicken. It was less greasy compared to the beef gyro, and the meat was chunky. There was no appreciable aroma that made it special. Without adding sauce over it, the only discernible flavor was smoky char from the grill.

Halal Guy's rice was neon orange. The batch that I received was slightly undercooked and rough. That made the rice dry and not very appetizing, but still edible. The rice wasn't as fluffy as Indian pulao or as flavorful as Lebanese pilaf that I've eaten before. While waiting in line, I had a chance to briefly watch Halal Guy's rice preparation. I noticed that a big burlap of basmati rice was dumped into a giant pot without being rinsed. It's a small detail, but made me wonder if soaking and rinsing the rice would have made a difference in texture.

In addition to the Halal Classic plate, I also ordered a side of falafels, which turned out to be the worst I ever had. They were rock hard, the exterior was extremely crunchy, and the chickpeas had turned semi-stale. There may have been many factors that contributed to this, but I should have known better than to order fried food that's been reheated in a tray.

Overall, my experience at Halal Guys was passable. I thought the value was good and the food was better tasting than most American chain fast-food options. However, I didn't think the experience was worth the 2 hour...

Today's visit was everything I'd expect from this iconic eatery. Staff was friendly and very welcoming. Food was on point. Took someone in for their first time and they loved it.

Feb 2024 update: Next time you visit take a few moments and watch how things happen during your visit. From the Hey Welcome to everyone who walks in. While you are trying to order and the person taking to to you stops and does the same thing than gets back to your order. To when you have been asked things about your order only to have that person yelling out Hey Welcome to the next person walking in than again getting back to your order. It never ends. It's like the old SNL skit cheeseburger pepsi. While all of this is happening the person cooking on the flat top is banging the heck out of it and taking part in the ritual of welcoming everyone who walks in than right back to the banging of the flat top. At some point you'll get to the paying portion of this show. You'll probably ask about something and be waiting for them to answer only to get Hi Welcome to the next people who have just walked in while the cook bangs down on the flat top. When asked if you are taking your order to go or eating in be ready to answer that a few more times. All of this noise just to go into their shop, sit down, and try to enjoy the company...