The Halal Spot — Restaurant in Old Bridge Township

The Fyre fest of food spots. I went here on behalf of a recommendation of a friend for a quick bite. First impressions when you get to the place it’s basically a gutted out Subway restaurant with little to no effort, same tables, chairs basically everything besides logo. That’s not a negative just stating a fact.

When it came to food, I went to order a Chicken zinger, but to no avail did they have it at the moment, that’s fine, I’m not a picky person. So I ordered a chicken and lamb platter and my buddy ordered a falafel platter and wanted to grab 2 water bottles. Unfortunately there was no water bottles either and the cashier said there was none at the moment and that it was on a shipment? Okay, that’s fine I’ll just drink from the soda fountain water. But wait, I was advised NOT to drink from there and instead offered me a coffee cup filled with lukewarm tap water. I don’t mean to be that guy but when there’s no fresh water available at a fast food establishment I get a little skeptical.

I’ll push that off though because the thing that bothered me the most was as I was about to sign for my meal while my card is in the chip reader, the cashier told me that the order would take about 20 minutes because there was a lot of orders on queue before mine! I had mentioned earlier that I came in for a quick bite on the rush but now it’s turned into sit down restaurant wait times. I figured it would be too much of a hassle to cancel the order and do the refund process so we decided to wait because we were really hungry already.

In that wait time I decided to go to the liquor store next door and grab 2 water bottles for a dollar each, now that’s a deal. Finally we get the food and to be honest, I’ve had better, it was good for the most part since we were hungry but the whole experience already put a bad taste in my mouth.

It may have been just my experience and different for others but I offer this review just to let you decide for yourself. Will not...

This is a vegetarian review. First of all ignore all the vegetarian menu items because on their own they're not worth it. If you want something a little more flavorful than I suggest following my cocktail mix with their menu; good luck!

tl;dr: my vegetarian version of their hotspot platter is the bomb! Do not go home without this. Next up there vegetarian burger cooked in the spicy zinger chicken style is also very good. Lastly, avoid their standard hot sauce and ask for the home brewed concoction which is more flavorful and less vinegary. Do not order any of their Punjabi vegetables like the paneer butter masala which was just terrible. The pita bread and hummus are also quite bad.

Now on to what to order if you're a vegetarian...

Ask them to use the falafel Patty in their veggie burger chop it up add the masala that they use in the masala fries and mix it up with their meat version of the hotspot platter but obviously minus the meat. Let them cook that on the grill and ask for the rice layer to be twice and a little less of the fries in the hotspot platter mix. When you get the platter ask for a lot of the tahini sauce on top and their special hot sauce on the side. For the toppings my experiences that tomatoes, lettuce and the chickpea go best - take a healthy dose of the salad and go ahead and ask for some tahini sauce on the side as well.

Next up is the burger, ask for the spicy zinger Burger but replace the chicken patty for the falafel Patty period on two occasions they have forgotten to add the spicy mayo on the burger so remind them to put that on it instead of their regular Mayo. Also, don't forget to ask them to add their special habanero sauce also on that burger which is what makes it the spicy zinger.

Lastly, add an order of masala fries. The hotspot platter itself is quite big and sufficient for one and a half hungry adults. If you choose to split the burger or get some fries on the side then that's more than enough food...

My Butter Chicken order only had 4 pieces of chicken in the curry... 4 small bite-sized pieces of chicken for 8.99 is deplorable. Comparatively, my wife's gyro had been filled to the brim with chicken.

I'll preface this review by saying I've ordered here once before using grubhub, and my experience was significantly different than in-person. My wife and I were stopping by to order a quick lunch in-person as we had a busy day, the customer facing menu in-store does not show all items available and you would have to either open their digital menu on their kiosk to view all available items or scan a QR code. The staff continually tried to upsell me on items regardless of my continual persistence on getting only butter chicken. The staff tried to upsell me on various items, including their Naan. I was trying to respectfully decline because the last time we ordered Naan from this store with our curry order the Naan was tough and had barely any flavor in the actual garlic Naan and I didn't want to say that at the time.

Once we got our food and returned home, my wife noticed my curry only came with 4 pieces of bite-sized chicken, I'm assuming this is because the staff was annoyed I didn't want Naan with the curry so they removed chicken from my order purposefully so I would get home and be upset i didnt get the naan or rice. I'm aware this isn't how much chicken comes in the order because our last order of butter chicken came with between 10-12 pieces of chicken (various sized, not just bite-sized)

I'm just incredibly surprised by how wildly different my experience became by ordering in-person as compared through Grubhub. I'll attach a photo with the chicken size (a bit of my wifes gyro stuffing was put next to it for comparison) so you can determine for yourself if 8.99 is worth the price of 4...