Karam Restaurant and Bar — Restaurant in Portland

I read amazing reviews on this place which is why we went here for my son’s birthday on a trip to Portland from out of state. There was only one person working here, he was the chef, the server, and also working at the counter, taking calls for pickup orders, and giving out the orders when people came for them. We felt bad for him, because he was practically doing EVERYTHING alone. Because he was so overworked, our food was really not what we expected going in. I don’t want to go into too much details on the food, because I don’t blame the poor soul working all alone, juggling 4 jobs by himself. All I can say is that we left feeling extremely disappointed. I’m sure on a better day when they are not so short staffed, the restaurant probably is much better, maybe it was just a bad day for them since they were so short staffed that only 1 guy was running the whole place. But whatever the case was, it was really a bad experience for us, especially as it was my son’s birthday and we went expecting a much better experience based on high reviews. I wish Karam restaurant all the best and hope they can fix this so they don’t...

Having grown up in the area with the highest population of Arabs outside of Arabia on top of having Lebanese and Iraqi family, I was born and raised on this food. I had high hopes for this place but I would have been fine with just satisfactory. I did not even get that. I ordered the lamb shawarma and fattoush. It was an absolute waste of $28 as-even though I was starving the food was inedible. I’ve seen more authentic “pita” at American franchises and it just tasted like grease. My sandwich was filled with lamb that only tasted old (couldn’t even call it mutton; it was just past,) and there wasn’t even any “garlic tahini” sauce nor toum. One and a half bites and it made my stomach turn-and I live in a 3rd World Country, always possessing an “iron stomach”! The fattoush was so vinegary that there was no other discernible flavor save for the pita on the salad that had the same greasy taste as the sandwich. Asked for a hot sauce like harissa or shatta and was given Frank’s…at least it wasn’t Tabasco! Contacted the restaurant immediately after getting home and trying to eat and have received...

Karam was decent. The atmosphere is great (open, airy and stylish, with a pleasant Middle Eastern soundtrack playing in the background), other than the obnoxiously loud kitchen timer going off every few minutes. Service was friendly, although I told the server I didn’t want any raw onions and she didn’t mention that the tabbouleh was saturated with them. Someone came out to ask how everything was, and when I mentioned the onion conundrum, he immediately offered to replace it with some extra hummus, which was delicious. The server came out later to apologize for the oversight. They were also good about substitutions – they had gluten-free pita, but I requested cucumber slices instead. They were a bit floppy, so not ideal hummus scoopers. When I asked about wifi, I was directed to the open network which had one bar – the “Karam” network, which showed a strong signal, must be for staff use only. The chocolate ice cream cake dessert was rich and chocolatey, but maybe just a touch stale. So lots of pros balanced with an almost equal...