Amanouz Cafe — Restaurant in Northampton

TL;DR: If you have food allergies, beware.

I ordered catering from Amanouz's. I have an extremely severe pepper allergy and repeatedly told the owner No Peppers in Anything multiple times when I placed the order. When we picked up the food, the trays on top said No Peppers, so I assumed everything had no peppers. Very Wrong. They had made a small portion of the food with no peppers, but put peppers in the rest. Peppers can/will send me into anaphylactic shock, even the smell/vapor. I opened one tray and my eyes immediately burned and my lips became itchy. I quickly closed it up and one of my colleague's quickly took the food with peppers out.

I called Amanouz's and was given the owner's cell phone number to speak with him directly since he stepped out. He argued with me about the No Peppers! His reasoning for disregarding the No Peppers was because people say they have an allergy but really don't like to eat a certain food and it must've only been 1 or 2 people, so making 2 separate things was okay. It took 5 minutes of arguing/trying to explain to him about my allergy, but his mindset is truly horrible. He finally agreed to remake the dishes he put peppers in.

We then also discovered that part of our order was missing. My colleague called twice to resolve that and we discovered the owner hadn't called in the replacement order. It took over an hour to get replacement dishes, along with the owner calling me multiple times about ingredients, 2 out of the 3 literally were about different kinds of peppers.

It was all very frustrating, stressful, and terrifying due to that blatant disregard for food allergies. It also shouldn't matter if someone orders food without certain...

After reading the reviews, I was excited to try this place for dinner. I was very disappointed. I have to assume that some items really are good here, and that I simply got unlucky with my choice. (I normally love fish in all forms, and had the "taginefish".)

I don't normally write negative reviews, and I feel bad criticizing something someone may have worked hard to create. However, with all the praise here (some of it deserved, I'm sure), I wanted to add a few words of caution to the next reader like myself. Some of the food here may be awesome, but some is definitely not awesome.

(As some other reviewers noted, the menu here is fairly large. I am not sure this is entirely a positive thing. I suspect that producing consistently high quality may be harder and harder as more dishes are added to a menu.)

The staff here seems friendly enough, but this is essentially a take-out restaurant with a few tables and no table service, so it's hard to really say much about service, other than there were no real problems placing an order...

I sincerely hope the owner reads this review. The only reason I continue to come here is because of the very gracious employee, that basically runs this restaurant. Brian, is one of those rare individuals that is genuine and goes above and beyond. I felt terrible seeing him stretched far too thin during prime time on a Saturday evening. The line was out the door, the wait was long, and he only had one cook working with him. Unbelievably, Brian had to take phone orders, in person orders, work the register, and waiter! This is no way to treat employees and customers. Considering COVID safety and general food safety, it also puts everyone at a higher risk because the demands are high and the staff (in this case, two people) are forced to work fast due to understaffing.

As for the food, it’s decent and sometimes pretty good. Brian, who seems like a manager or owner, is a genuine guy. You’re lucky if you dine here with his kind service when he’s not being stretched thin- taken complete advantage of by...