Moonlight Grill — Restaurant in Portland

Okay, this is my 2nd and last time reviewing this place after a dozen visits. When they first opened their food was great and flavors were rich. But like most middle eastern and Iraqi places, their quality decreased over time due to arrogance and sloppiness. First hit would have to be their "American Cheese Burger", from the get go it was missing cheese. Being optimistic, I told myself "maybe it's cheesy stuffed". Boy was I wrong, the pattie was mixed in with so many differnt spices it would have made Chemical Ali (Ali Hassan al-Masjid) proud. 6hrs later your head will be buzzing from the nutmeg. Well unless pumpkin spice is your thing. Multiple times I've asked them if they can make the pattie without the spice bomb, but they mix all their ground together and have this one mix for all their ground meat dishes. The french fries was good tho. Now onto the arabic food. Everything is dry and lacking salt/flavor. I'm unsure if they premake them and radiate them in the microwave or just over cook everything. Atleast the rice is good? Nope, there's a trend with these restaurants claiming to serve Basmati rice but there is no basmati aroma. Oily and not fluffy. You should be able to squeeze a ball with real rice. My guess, like many people inexperienced with cooking rice they are using converted/processed rice (Sela basmati)

As a summary, it's literally an indoor food cart but with marked up prices and less flavor. It's such a miss, you actually miss the restaurant that it...

I had bad experience with both the restaurant and its service its self. To begin the restaurant was dirty, and that made me confused as to why it was because there was no one occupying the tables. But let's forget that for a moment, what really will stay in my mind for a long time is the service. To start off I had only one critic, only that the food was cold. You would think there would be an easy solution to this problem but the way the staff reacted was anything but. The supposed chef of the kitchen came out by themselves and walked out to me, and I thought while they were there I could tell them about my problem. Once I told them about the food being cold they kept insisting that it wasn't, they came up from reasons reaching the air conditioner cooling it down but there wasn't any a/c and we had just gotten our food a moment ago. And soon this became a fight for them, I don't understand why they were so defensive all I asked was to heat up the food. I don't know if they thought I was insulting them or not but when I told them this I meant it as a helpful tip. Not only for me but for other customers in the future. Overall the visit was very upsetting in general, I would not recommend this...

Okay, so I'm going to warn you that this place is not fancy by any means and the indoor dining setup is a little...how should I say? Old school--it's like something you might find in an alley. Certainly a hole in the wall. But I'm telling you it's worth getting past that initial image and yes it's in this strange, small strip mall but the food is exceptionally fresh, so tasty and decently priced. Literally the nicest people work here as I must have bugged them for five cups of hot tea while I was there and they were happy to accommodate. I don't know what they put in their hot tea in Iraq. I didn't ask but it's super sweet and comforting after the meal. These pictures are after scarfing down half the dishes, so please do not judge the lack of meat. When the food got delivered to the table, the portion amounts were just right! This was such a relaxed, super chill place and definitely delicious. They have so many vegetarian and vegan options and tons of meat options as well and honestly I have never tasted Iraqi food this good since trying it years ago in Vancouver BC. Lucky for the locals here! We ordered the lamb tikka, mezzah and...