Mal Al Sham — Restaurant in El Cajon

Update........(Oct 2023) During my annual trip to San Diego I came back to Mark Al Sham to reunite with friends and family. Great food, excellent service, friendly staff who are courteous to a fault. Piped in Arabic music. I'm not sure how you improve on this. There is no down side here. I have seen some reviews that mention parking as a problem. There is parking, but of course with a restaurant this popular parking will always be a problem. As a general rule, if there is a lot of parking available at an eatery, I avoid it. People aren't going there for a reason. Ma Al Sham is popular so you will probably struggle to find a space, but it will be worth the effort........

More importantly, I can not say enough about how generous the family is that owns this place is. We ordered the platter for 5, it fed 10 people with leftovers. All of it was fabulous. The homemade dessert was so good that after I ate mine, I ate my friends while she wasn't looking. I will never travel to San Diego without a visit to this wonderful restaurant.

(Oct, 2022) Fabulous place to eat. Outstanding food, excellent customer service, Arabic music while you eat. Since I don’t speak Arabic, someone in the dining room took the time to tell me about the music, who the singer was, what type of song (pop, folk, etc) and why they played it in the dining room. Very friendly. They have their own parking lot. (Parking in SD can be a challenge) What more could you ask for? They take pride in all they do. I brought a party of 9 for dinner. The check was under $150.00! Fast, polite service and the best food in San Diego. I lived in SD for years and ate at a lot of mediocre restaurants. They figure that you’ll overlook their shortcoming because you are on vacation. This place is different. Not fancy, but if quality service and great food matter, eat here. Top shelf. Last visit I met one of the managers, Muhammad. A great guy, very...

Dear Owner,

thanks for the reply, however, you are not telling the truth. If I buy take away, the food is around 8USD and on top of it I pay tips. Only the time i did not pay tip was the last time because your staff always make mistakes when they take order. Instead of training them, you always make excuses about being busy. It is good to be busy and serve your customers. You never heard a saying that Customer has rights also? You are there to serve customers so you can be busy and your business can grow. If you say we are busy and we do not have time for take away customers, then why you open a restaurant? You should be happy to be busy and serve your customers in a good manner.

When you say about free stuff, what free things you gave me???? You always put lemon, pickle and other stuff on side which suppose to come with food, and I keep telling your staff that I do not want none of those because it will go waste and you were telling me, if I do not wanna eat, i can throw away. I told you that throwing away food is not good so instead, you can keep it for other customers.

When you talk about the thermos, it is not a big thermos for a whole family, it is a Starbucks grande size thermos, which is equal to 2 small cup in your store. So why would you lie about it. You have a cam in your shop and I can prove that it is a small thermos not a thermos you were describing. I never came a cross a cup of black tea that cost more than 8 USD so you are trying to fool people instead accepting your faults.

If you wanna calculate the money you lost, you can calculate the lost of customers that are regular to your shop and bringing others as a customer to make your business grow. Anyway, there is no point for me to continue about this because no matter what you will not accept your mistakes instead trying to make your customer look bad who always supported...

One of the best Middle Eastern restaurants I have tried in San Diego. Best in terms of food, not in terms of being fancy, but who is looking for fancy anyway? If you want to impress someone, the food will impress them. The food is as authentic as it can get and thankfully not flavored down to cater to bland palettes.

I had ordered a 5 person platter to go which came out $95 with taxes. I had a long day at work so when I came to pick up the food, I was quite hungry myself so I thought I'd order some food to eat there and then pick up my to-go order. I ordered a lamb tikka which came with rice and a salad and it was about $20++. Served in about 15 mins, the dish was too big for me to finish alone. Very good portion of meat. Very moist and the flavor of grilled meat was absolutely delicious and had a hint of the smokey flavor. Excellent value and taste!!!! Slightly fatty but that's expected from lamb.

Now let's talk about my order for the 5 person platter. I ordered it because I was too lazy to cook that week so this would be my lunch to work. You can check out my image to see the sheer amount of food that came. It came out to a combination of 9 medium and large containers of food plus a box of hummus and a box of garlic cream/paste). Needless to say, this is more than 5 meals and considering the value, I will likely make this a monthly ordeal where a week of my lunches will be from Mal Al Sham.

Overall experience: 9/10 Food: 9.5/10 (slightly oily but that's how it's made) Parking: 8/10 (very busy parking) Ambience: 8/10 Value for food: 10/10

Would I drive 35 mins each way from La Jolla to come here?...