I recently dined at Al Bawadi with my wife, brother and sister-in-law, and unfortunately, our experience was far from what we expected.

From the moment we walked in, the service was unprofessional. The manager who was at the front didn't bother to greet us or even say a word—just used hand gestures to confirm the number of seats we needed, which felt impersonal and rude. Things only went downhill from there.

First, we were seated at a dirty table with crumbs and water on the seat, making us uncomfortable right from the start. The waitress, a blonde woman whose name I didn’t catch, was not only inattentive but also dismissive of her numerous mistakes throughout the evening.

She managed to mix up our order with another table’s, leaving us with dishes we didn’t order. To make matters worse, she forgot one of our drinks entirely, and when she finally brought it, she accidentally dropped a glass near our feet, could have caused serious injury. Despite all this, the waitress continued to act as though these mistakes were no big deal.

Towards the end of the meal she knocked over my brother in laws drink on the table and when we expressed our frustration to her she said “this is a restaurant" as if we should be ok with bad service. Her dismissive attitude was frustrating, especially when she we watched her discussing handing over our table to another waitress. We didn’t see her for the rest of the night but the other waitress was at least competent.

To top it all off, the new waitress she didn’t even notice that there was a fourth person at our table—my sister-in-law—whose plate wasn’t cleared until we had to ask. It felt like we were invisible to the staff, and it ruined what should have been a pleasant family dinner.

Overall, the service was shockingly poor, with a lack of attention to detail and basic customer service. I rarely leave negative reviews especially for Muslim owned businesses, but the experience at Al Bawadi was unacceptable. The management seriously needs to address the quality of their staff and service if they hope to retain customers. We left feeling disappointed and disrespected, and I can’t see us returning anytime soon. I also do not know why the Niles location is so different from the Bridgeview location. I’ve never had anything like this happen there.