King of Falafel — Restaurant in Madison

Absolutely avoid this place like COVID-19

Imagine possibly the worst service you've could have gotten. Food takes hours to get to you, it comes to you cold with some of the food being burnt. It comes to you without hardly any presentation as if they just slapped it on there. Food comes to you missing or just not there at all. You try to communicate with staff there but they're either unwilling to or just can't understand or speak a lick of English.

This was our horrendous experience ordering through King of Falafel. Took them TWO HOURS for us to get our food for pickup with no reason given as to why. Repeatedly we've called the restaurant to see what the holdup was and they refused to answer.

When we got our food our orders were for some unholy reason stacked like they were trying to play tetris with them, with one of our orders on the side and another COMPLETELY UPSIDE DOWN, spilling all the contents into the bag! Literally the food was as if it was thrown in there and tossed around with the food being on the side and grease spilling out and pooling in the bag, one of them was pierced and we had it spill out onto our carpet!

Their shawarma is hardly worth calling proper shawarma if they can't even keep their hummus separate and decide to bathe the food in it and keep ACTUAL SHREDDED PIECES of the shawarma bread separate and once again COLD!

They didn't even attempt to construct a kebab if not just gave us another shawarma. Lamb came to us BURNT AND COLD!

We had SEVERAL PIECES of our appetizers and entree missing and somehow tasted WORSE than what you can just buy and make at home from the store!

I didn't receive my fish order at all and honestly depressed me how awful not only their fish is but their service.

If not to make matters worse, we got food poisoning in the morning and ended up vomiting it all up.

Literally the only thing they did right was the falafel. AND THAT WAS IT.

King of Falafel. Fool at Everything Else. Go to State Street.

I am honestly expecting a full refund from this place soon now then...

This was ordered via GrubHub. GrubHub service was just fine. Koffa made a nice delivery during rush hour. Now... the review of the food.

Well... the falafel was at least good. But that was about it for my order. I ordered the Lamb Shwarma, which came with fries (my choice), lettuce, onions and tomato that was dressed in a vinagerrette. It also came with, what I'm assuming was baba ganoush and something resembling a pita.

THE GOOD: The Falafel was good. Had a nice crispy exterior. Interior was green, as it should be and had all the flavor one would expect. The hummus that came with it was on the thin side. I "think" it had some flavor, but not really sure. It at least moistened the falafel.

THE BAD:

The lamb shwarma was put on top of the fries, which instantly made the fries soggy. It certainly looked substantial when you opened it up, but it was far from being an amount worth paying $17.00 for. It was maybe $10 worth of lamb. The shwarma itself was soggy and did not have any sort of spice profile. It was very underwhelming. As noted, the lettuce, tomato and onion were dressed with a vinagerette that was mostly oil and minimal vinegar. Any herbs were significantly lacking.

THE UGLY:

So it comes down to the pita and the baba ganoush.

The pita resembled a manila folder that had been cut into quarters. No substance, no flavor. Nothing. Might as well have cut up a folder from my office.

The baba ganoush though was absolutely terrible. I could only stomach one bite because it tasted like an ash tray. Seriously... people eat this s#!t? I would not suggest this to my worst enemy. I don't know what they put in it, but it's not supposed to taste like that. Based on the baba ganoush alone, the Dane County Health Department needs to conduct an...

I have been meaning to check out this place for years. I think I got my expectations up too high for my visit. This is a huge bummer for me to say. I was totally disappointed in my food. I stopped in during their lunch menu and ordered two gyro lunch meals (come with fries and a drink). Super cheap price of 11.99 for the two meals. The fries were your standard fare and did not disappoint. The gyro on the other hand... the bread was hard and chewy. The meat was rubbery. and there were so many onions on it! I love onions and even I thought there were too many. I've been to Parthenon on State so many times and they just have better gyros in town. I'm not completely shaken though. I may go back to check out some of their other items, as people rave about the food here. Maybe I just caught them on a bad day. side note: So, I was the only one in the restaurant and my two gyro meals took about 15-20 mins to get. Not sure why there was a long wait. It was so smelly in the restaurant, that my clothes were so saturated with the smell that I had to change clothes...