Abu Omar Halal — Restaurant in Houston

I can't believe this place has been here for seven years and we only just discovered it this weekend!

We occasionally stay at the Magnolia hotel on Texas Avenue when we're in town to see a show that lets out late, so we don't have to drive 45 minutes home on awful Houston highways.

We went to the Houston Grand Opera this weekend, and between checking in and getting ready for a night out, we didn't have time to eat before the show.

We were ravenous afterward, thought we'd have to order McDonald's, but hubby found this place, and it's only about 450 feet from the Magnolia hotel!

We walked our dog over there, and hubby stayed outside with him while I went in and ordered.

The folks behind the counter were super friendly and answered the few questions I had.

We had a lamb gyro sandwich, a chicken zinger (fried chicken tender) sandwich, a side of beautifully seasoned fries and a side of pickled vegetables.

Do. Not. Sleep. On the pickled veg plate! It had pickled carrots, cauliflower, cucumber and turnips. Everything had a nice crunch to it, and it was indulgently salty.

The sandwiches were great, too. They did an awesome grill on them such that the wrap bread was still crispy by the time we got back to the hotel. The meat was juicy, and they had chopped pickle pieces on the sandwich, too.

The fries had a fantastic seasoning that was, again, indugently salty.

If you're avoiding sodium, this place probably isn't for you. But for us, at the end of a long night, it was a tasty treat served up by really nice people that was the perfect endcap to the night.

And hey, maybe if you eat enough salt, you can preserve yourself from the inside out and live forever! I'm willing to test that theory.

This place is also on the popular Main Street scene, which we didn't visit, but if you've been at the club for a while, I imagine this is also a great place to end your evening: They're open...

Not a good experience for me. Came in early to get chicken shawerma over rice to go. The person at the counter showed me a picture of the shawerma plate from the menu on the wall. I asked him if he can separate the sauce, pickles and salad instead of putting them in one to go box together. The guy seemed to have hard time understanding what tursh (in arabic) and pickle is. Anyhow he eventually seemed to understand and said yes he will separate the sauce, pickles and salad. I then asked him if they have tabouleh salad... again the guy didn't seem to understand at first but then said yes. So i asked him to replace the regular salad with tabouleh salad. He packed everything in to go boxes and i left after paying. Later once i opened the boxes I found only sauces were separate. The salad was in the box instead of being separate and it was the regular salad, no tabouleh. There were no pickles either. They really need to put people who know about the food they are selling and be able to communicate and take orders from customers. He just seemed off and indifferent to customers. The shawerma itself turned out to be dry and not flavorful at all. So as much as i want to find a positive side to this experience, i cant other than being able to find halal food in downtown area. I would rather go to Phonecia nearby for a more authentic and flavorful...

I ordered via Uber Eats but this restaurant does not provide any option to rate the order on the app so I am here on Google. We ordered Chicken Kabob Over Rice and Lamb Kabob Over Rice, both $18 each! There were 5 kabos per plate which were bland, tough and chewy but we were able to eat them. However, the rice was HARD, UNCOOKED, and DRENCHED IN A STICKY SMELLY OIL! The strange smell had spread to everything in the plate. All the rice had to be thrown out - It was not even edible! Also, the description was incorrect on uber eats. There was no vermecilli in what was called 'Vermicelli Rice'. The salad had no Black Olives, no Jalapenos, TONS OF LETTUCE which was not even listed in the description. I am surprised at all the good reviews. Taste and flavour aside, at minimum we can count on a restaurant delivering food that is EDIBLE. This was not the case here. Very dissapointed at the wasted...