Sadaf Restaurant — Restaurant in Los Angeles

We recently heard about this restaurant from a friend. We went to try it this past weekend as we were in the area. We were told that the kabobs are better than Raffi’s Place in Glendale. Which made us curious! My gold standard in kabob is Raffi right now. So I had to go and try this place. So I went to Sadaf with that expectation that this would be much better than Raffi. The restaurant has a nice vibe, it’s located in a busy street with limited street parking, but I think they offer valet parking in the back. We ordered what we would typically order at Raffi to compare. We got the Naderi Soltani, Juciy chicken and a tadig with two stews (ghormeh sabzi and ghaymeh) I paid extra for half rice and half salad so I can try the salad as well. I got shirazi salad. They were fast in serving the food. They brought out food with 10-15 min. They do not offer any complementary bread, cheese and sabzi as most places commonly do. So we got the tadig, it was okay, nothing especial, the stews were “okay”, again nothing especial. I probably won’t order stew at this place judging by the two stews we tried on the tadig. Next they brought the soltani and juicy chicken. My first impression was that the portions were small, but the meat and chicken were very, very thick. They did not bring butter or onion to the table and I had to request it. The rice was good, the kobideh was okay but since it was very thick in the middle it was still undercooked. The barg was chewy, not the best barg either. Both the barg and kobideh needed more salt. The juicy chicken was okay as well, very thick chicken but it was missing something as well, salt or lime. The Shiraz salad was mostly onion, and cucumber without any lime juice, tomato,salt or pepper. We were able to finish our plate and have just small leftover. Our bill came to $94 for two. I thought this was over priced and was an ok restaurant. The prices were about $10 more than Raffi for the same dishes. I think for the same amount you can have a better meal at Raffi’s place. At Raffi’s the portions are bigger, the price is cheaper, and quality is much better. We always have left over at Raffi. Plus they will bring complementary onion, bread etc given this experience I will probably won’t go back to this restaurant. We eat a lot outside and have tried many places. This did not meet my expectations of a...

The food was some awesome, some meh. To be specific, Naderi was wonderful, but Gheymeh was smashed and probably couple days old. Even minor items (like onions we asked) was not fresh.

The service was okay. I am not gonna rate the fact that 6 different people showed up at our desk during the course of one hour we were there. That's not common, but maybe it's how they manage. And No, it wasn't much of a rush hour -- 70 percent of the tables in our area were empty.

The fact that bothered me the most was how unprofessional they were when setting up a desk behind us. It was unbelievable how they were dragging the tables on the floor causing a loud high pitch sound to be issued right under our ear. And it wasn't once as an accident. They did it maybe 5 times in a row and every time we had to stop the conversation and hold our ears. That was insane! I wouldn't do this at home to my best friend. Come on, why don't you ask someone to come help you and lift the damn table? It's not difficult to show courtesy to your customers who are eating 4 feet away from you.

I am not local but I have been going there almost every time I was in LA. Probably not anymore. There is no rarity of Persian restaurants in LA, so they should keep up to the competition both in terms of the food quality and the service quality.

PS. When people ask for to-go boxes, it's a sign that they are leaving. You cannot leave them unattended for 5 minutes and only offer them the desert menu when they are asking for the bill. It's late. I would put this on the management -- such negligence, even on small details, costs big in the long run.

PPS. Just remembered: pleeeeaaasssseee teach your staff not to put the spoon I am about to eat with on the table directly. That's where everyone's hand, as well as the bottom of the plates from the kitchen (and the bare hands of the servers who bring the plates) touch. It happened to me when he was taking away my old appetizer plate -- he just picked up my spoon and put that...

Sadaf, overall, is a nice place. I went for dinner (I did go pretty late) with my family. First of all, parking is $7—valet or self park—which is honestly insane. Anyway, we got an appetizer that never showed up and two entrees. They don’t need reservations for parties under five, so we just did a walk in. They were able to seat us because we went not even an hour before closing. Immediately, we were helped and a waiter took our orders. He was very nice and conversational (pretty sure his name was Hamed). Due to our rather late arrival, he had to put in our orders al at the same time (appetizers and entrees), which meant that they’d come around the same time and not in the typical appetizer, entree fashion (which was fine). So apparently they didn’t put in the order for the appetizer, which is why they gave us hummus and yogurt on the house. I wasn’t too hungry anyway, so it’s okay; we were alright with the fact that the full order didn’t go through. Anyway, the two entrees we got were the cornish hen and the Sadaf #4, which contained lamb, juicy chicken which we swapped out for chicken koobideh, and salmon. The food was good, but nothing special. The lamb was a little hard, chewy, and kinda bland for my taste, but it was edible. The salmon was also bland. The chicken koobideh was pretty good though. The cornish hen was also okay. They gave us a salad (which I didn’t try, but the rest of my party said was good). We also got complimentary bread and butter at the beginning of our meal, but it was cold (as was the rest of our food actually). Overall, this place is pretty nice. The ambience is good, but it’s nothing special. The food is mediocre, as is the service. It’s a nice place to go if you’re in the mood for some casual. Our server alone makes me want to bump up the rating to 3.5, but since I cannot do that here and I’m rating the place not the person, I’ve rounded down. If you choose to come here, I’m sure you’ll like it decently, as I did, but in my opinion, it’s...