Grand Sahara Mediterranean Grill — Restaurant in New York

Rude and incompetent service who hung up on my mom in Mother's Day.

I wanted to treat my mom for mother's day esp since she has been stressed recently with her own mom being very sick. She didn't want to go out so we ordered from Grand Sahara and the website said it would arrive in 45 minutes. After an hour nothing was delivered, so we called. We spoke with two very impatient and rude individuals.

The first female, after placing my mom on hold numerous times finally confirmed that the order had not been started. We'd been waiting an hour so my mom asked that the order be cancelled. The lady kept telling my mom to check the website to do that. The website for grand sahara does not have any option to refund or cancel an order which my mom explained. After my mom was adamant (which btw why should the customer have to argue about what is available on the restaurant's website??) finally the female put another female on the phone who had an even bigger attitude. She also suggested the website at which point my mom again explained that it doesn't offer that feature. Then the female admitted that they are receiving orders online but they are "clogged." The rep offered that her husband would deliver the food, but we would still have to wait over 35 minutes. Not only is that unfair but we are super hungry at this point. My mom asked to please just cancel the order, the woman continued to try and convince my mom to let her do the order and then was saying how we are in a different zip code and it's mother's day. Thank you for blaming the customer for YOUR incompetence!!! Then the second woman finally agreed to cancel and then RUDELY HUNG UP ON MY MOTHER. My mom was in the middle of saying thank you and that she would check her card and the female said "uh huh bye" and click hung up. Not only was this incompetent and a rude experience but now my mom has the added task of having to check her card during the week. Then TWO HOURS later, a delivery guy calls and says he's ten minutes away. I said please check if they cancelled the order. He called back and he said they aren't sure if it's cancelled but to keep the food. He only brought one sandwich....

Good service, below average food. The kebabs are not tasty. Was expecting softer meat. I think they just buy whatever is cheaper. Given that prices are very inflated in comparison to other restaurants around, would be nice if they weren't greedy. Will not be coming back. Rather buy Gyro from the carts for fraction of the price or order from Nargis in Brooklyn for kebabs.

Edit: Bumped down to 1 star. Seems like customer is the b* here and the merchant is always right. I have attached their response in the image. The person responding to reviews is so aggressive and has no place in customer service industry. If you can't handle criticism from your guests, you have no business running a restaurant. If I were in food industry, I'd read every single review and use them to improve my service. It's free survey that others have to pay for. You're literally being told what the issue is and you chose to attack me instead of owning up to your weaknesses and improving.

Update 2: No idea what you're talking about. I've never ordered rice pudding. I had combination platter and other kebabs. All of which were hard and dry. Rice that came with the platter was fine, meat was not. I can cook rice at home for 25 cents, I can't cook kebabs. Defeats purpose of ordering. If I was a gator maybe chewing rubberband meat would not be an issue, but regular human teeth can't break it...

Went to Sahara for the first time today. The food was awesome. I had the mixed Gyro over rice. Delicious is a understatement. The lamb and chicken meat was fresh hot and juicy off the spicket. The rice was fluffy and delicious. The side salad that came with the dish was pure deliciousness. The red cabbage in the salad was so sweet and fresh. Oh and how can I forget the Turkish hot bread they give you before the meal. Hot fluffy and yummy. But be careful very easy to get full on the bread. And by the way the white yogurt sauce to go over the meat and salad was phenomenal

Now on to the staff friendly. And very very attentative. In fact the owner Tony came over and asked how everything was. I told him the food was amazing and I'd definitely be back. He shook my hand told me his name. Asked me mine. And said as a thank you I'd like to comp you dessert. Me and my lady had the Turkish coffee. And the Baklava . Let me say the Turkish coffee was silky smooth full body coffee heaven. Just right. Not overly strong. But not weak. It was in the goldie locks zone. JUST RIGHT! And the baklava was really good. I don't like super sweet baklava. But this was just right sweet. And the I'm gonna guess the pistachio filling was the icing on the cake/baklava. Great eating experience. Definitely well...