Ali Baba Mediterranean Kitchen — Restaurant in El Paso

We ( Family of 5, including my self) visited this place on Aug 17, Saturday, hoping to have a nice dinner . As soon as we entered, the a very nice, smiling and well mannered female cashier and/or server greeted us, but the young guy (later found out about his name , Majad or Majid or Majed) looked at us with frown. the Restuarant had two families busy in their dinner ( a family of two, and a family of three). While we were heading to seat ourselves, I smiled and jokingly said to the girl and Majed, that this family brought me from outside so i can enjoy the dinner with them. The girl picked up the humor and laughed along. Where as Majed's expression changed from frown to anger, so I asked him, hey young man! No sense of humor? He replied by saying, NOO... and then added, for a family of 5, u have to call in advance and make reservations. I was really taken aback. After a few moments, I regained my composure and told him, I am sorry, I didnt know that u have such a rule in ur restuarant. (Such a rule was neither posted outside nor inside). He gestured us to be seated and said, "its okay. I will allow you to sit and have a meal." I really didnt like the way he made that genture. It was as if he was a lofty majestic king allowing us to dine on his grand dining table, as if doing us a great favour by allowing us to dine in his restuarant. I realized that there is no need to stay there further, and told my family, "lets not spend in a place where people have no manners as to how to talk to a paying customer." I approached the counter, and inquired if any manager is present on this shift. I was informed that he is not present currently. So I asked for his name and number, which Majed gave very arrogantly. I asked him if he is related to the manager, and he nodded. Not only did we find another Mediteranean restuarant, they were so courteous that it almost made me forget about this bad...

My family and I went for the 1st time today and while the food was pretty good, everything else was not. The service was subpar and the restaurant was not busy. The waitress would leave and then take forever to come back to check on us. Ultimately she forgot my son's order and didn't come back to check on us or refill glasses until we finished our whole meal. She did try to make it up to us, and I understand that things happen, but considering there were only 2 other tables full in the whole restaurant, forgetting someone's meal was a big one. Still, I was willing to overlook it until we got the check and found that they had added 20% gratuity automatically - we were a party of 4 adults, 1 child who didn't eat because they forgot his food, and a baby. Trying to tack on a 20% gratuity to a party of less than 6 adults just seems shady. To make matters worse the owner came out to seemingly apologize but became argumentative and passive aggressive very quickly, stating that "no one ever complains about it" and "the computer does it automatically" and even going so far as to lie about the percentage, arguing with us that it was "only 18 percent and not 20" after I had just calculated it on my phone. Regardless of whatever the excuse was, gratuity should not have been tacked on and most especially not after forgetting to bring out a whole plate of food until after we were already done eating. Considering this was our 1st time there and everything that went wrong to include the shady business practices, I don't think we'll be returning. I encourage anyone who's reading this to check your bills before you...

I’ve been to this place probably four times now. The food is seriously amazing and always consistent. It’s definitely one of my favorite places in El Paso and the atmosphere is great. The only thing keeping me from giving them five stars is the service. Every single time I’ve gone I’ve gotten bad service. I’m unsure if there is a language barrier or not but every time we go, we’re never given a single smile the entire time, they act like we’re a burden to them, act confused and have a judge mental face every time we ask them something or ask for a side, and hardly come around the table to check on us. The last time I went my best friend explained multiple times she didn’t want fries in her shawarma sandwich but she still wanted fries on the side and her sandwich came with fries in it. They’re very blunt and left us hanging for quite a while after we finished eating; so long that we decided to just get up and pay up at the register. They didn’t even ask us how we wanted the ticket whether it was split or not. When we left we got a smile and a thank you which was the nicest service we got all night. I hated tipping so low but as a server myself I was not going to tip anymore for terrible service. I’m still giving it four stars because everything else about this restaurant is great but please do something about the servers, maybe retrain these kids because I don’t like feeling like a bother and I’m just in the way when I...