Blodgett Food Hall — Restaurant in Houston

Placed an order for Nyamming’s on a Sunday evening. It’s located inside of the Blodget Food Hall - save your time and just drive over to the actual restaurant. We’ve driven by this food hall several times in the past and will continue to do so in the future. Never again will I place an order here, which is unfortunate because we love Nyamming’s, this location is more convenient, but the service is extremely underwhelming and is a terrible impression of the restaurant. We’ve dined at the original location and met who I believe was the owner years ago and I just can’t fathom that he would be pleased.

The front kitchen has windows where you can see them working. Not one person that I saw behind the kitchen for any of the restaurants in the food hall had on a hairnet. That is a sanitary issue. I’m curious to know how the food hall concept truly works. It looks like the restaurants are not individually staffed to cook their own food. From my own assumptions from what I saw it looks like the staff is cooking in whatever kitchen orders are coming in because they weren’t in the same kitchens the entire time.

We placed an order at 7:41pm and did not receive it until 8:38pm. Almost an entire hour. At this point, I don’t care how the food tastes. I was hungry an hour ago. I was so ready to go I didn’t even check my food, so hopefully everything is in there. EVERY restaurant that had an order had a delay or a wait time that did not change for quite some time. Eventually, my order was deleted from the screen, but was not ready. It said delayed for the longest.

The man who was going back and forth from the kitchen placing orders in the cubbies for pick up was very nice and polite; even though he said there was about 7 minutes left on the order, which turned into 15-20 minutes. He apologized for the wait when he delivered our food out. I understand the kitchen is not his fault and he does not deserve to catch the flack for it; but they either need to get a head chef to manage the kitchen or if there is one, they need to get a new one with more experience or an ability to improve the quality of work. They also need a front of the house staff member to keep the tables clean instead of slinging a rag side to side and calling it clean. So much potential here, but they’re dropping the ball big time.

A positive beside the nice employee upfront…..there was plenty of parking..should’ve been our...

Mixed bag.

The good: great food options, good food, and plenty of accomodations for veg* and other diet restricted folk.

The okay: the space to eat in is... Fine, with games and such. Bland. Not great, not bad.

The bad: Firstly, for a place that makes you order through touchpads they slow everything down by only having one touchpad. If there's any line this can add ten to twenty minutes to trying to order. On top of that a lot of the places that serve here are slow. Which makes this a bad place to go for a timed meal (e.g. a lunch break) or when you have a pending appointment.

Not a place to be avoided, but also not a place to seek out unless you know what you want and have time to spare.

EDIT: There's no way to respond to an owner's response to a review, so I'm going to add my response here. The owner's stance that one can use a phone to place an order is fair, and well-taken. I would offer two responses:

First, my most recent time I didn't have my phone with me. I had left it at work to charge and was out on a lunch break. There was a group of people at the one ordering kiosk in front of me who spent fifteen minutes deciding and placing their order. To be clear: I don't begrudge them taking their time to order food, this is absolutely something that they can and should do to maximize their dining experience. But it left me without an ability to order food until they were done. Highly annoying.

Second, Blodgett Food Hall doesn't have free wi-fi. At best I think the answer of "Well, just order online using your phone" in that context means that you're de facto charging someone to access your menus. Maybe I'm a curmudgeon out of step with modern times, but I don't think that's right or fair. At worst, that means that someone who doesn't have data for their phone or doesn't have a smart phone is locked out of the online ordering process and is stuck with the inconvenience of waiting for whoever was ahead of them to order. Which, given the delays with a number of the restaurants on site, is not a minor problem.

A second kiosk solves most of these issues...

UPDATE: AVOID THIS PLACE BY ALL MEANS- the OWNER is a LIAR and a THIEF. after speaking to him face to face I was informed he Don't know how to do refunds nor did he have the contact info to give me. he told me it was public info go look it up After calling the POLICE and filing charges-All of a sudden I was REFUNDED- while I patiently waited for the laws to show up i PAID FOR A SERVICE AND DID NOT RECEIVE ODER. AND DENIED A REFUND- THATS CALLED SCAMMING AND STEALING

I decided to patron this establishment physically in person. I ordered from 3 different restaurants. Patiently waited 50 minutes for my food. I finally asked hey can I at least get my drinks ?? Only to learn my food had never been prepared. I kindly asked for a refund - a young gentleman assisted me how to request a refund (which I did 3 times). Of course I never got the refund. I returned to the location and asked about my refund - no one on spot could assist. I’ll have my manager call you in the morning. I asked what’s the phone number to this location? OH WE DONT HAVE A PHONE (the hell). Ok so can I have your manager’s phone number ? It’s his personal number he doesn’t want anyone with it. Ok can I have his email address? We don’t know it . How UNPROFESSIONAL! If I could give this place NEGATIVE ZERO stars I would . I will continue to go every day until...