Joe's Grill — Restaurant in Royal Oak

Excellent restaurant! Summary tl;dr at the end...

We decided to stop in after a day at the Detroit Zoo and man am I glad we did! I used to run a fast casual Mediterranean restaurant and let me tell you: every single thing I tried at Joe's Grill was what we made on our absolute best days, if even that! Everything at Joe's Grill tastes fresh, crisp, and delicious. You can taste the consideration of spices and the attention to cook time in every product they make (which is all made in-house and fresh daily).

We ordered a nice spread starting with a chicken shawarma bowl on a bed of golden rice, topped with tabouli, feta, pickled turnips, sumac onions (to die for), Arabic pickles (reincarnate and die a second time for), turshi, banana peppers, regular hummus, spicy garlic paste, and a light sprinkle of black olives. We also got sides of fried falafel, baba ganoush, tabouli, and hummus. My wife got the Joe's Burger which came with jalapeno aoli, roasted jalapenos, avocado, roasted tomato and a Asadero cheese with crushed lentil soup as a side. For drinks we got two rounds of freshly made juices: apple, and watermelon apple. I finished with a Turkish coffee.

Wow. Absolutely, wow. We had enough food to last my wife and I two full meals! We also shared our falafel, hummus, and baba ganoush with family, and still had enough baba ganoush, hummus, and tabouli to make up the better part of a third meal. Their portions are absolutely perfect and I truly felt like I got my money's worth just in the volume, but more than my money's worth accounting for the flavor!

Summary tl;dr: Joe's Grill is your one stop shop for fresh, healthy, and great tasting Mediterranean food! This fast casual joint has the quality and flavor of an upscale sit down restaurant without the wait. Saying I recommend this place is an understatement as there are simply not enough stars...

Both Bowls had little to no meat in them. In addition, it was overly wet and swimming in liquid. Not what I pictured when I ordered a Mediterranean type bowl. It was almost a soup. The food was cold and the black plastic containers the food sat in was freezing cold , to the touch, on the bottom of each bowl. Almost as if, the restaurant stores their bowls in a fridge or freezer. The only item I truly saw in my bowl in excess other than sauce was sliced jalapeños, it was almost so many jalapeños that it was insulting.

The seasoned fries were $4 or more, and you could count the 20 fries by the quick glance of scanning your eyes. In addition, they were supposed to be seasoned fries and it didn’t even have a lick of seasoning other than on 1/3 of the styrofoam container. The styrofoam container had the fries completely soggy as well, due to the condensation and the fact that it seemed like the fries just were never cooked well or crunchy. Just soggy and under seasoned with few to have. Didn’t even eat the food.

Whether or not I am compensated for this meal mistake, it needed to be said. It had to potential to be good food, but sadly it seemed as if the person preparing it did not care about the customer. I tried uploading this to...

I ordered a large fattoush salad complemented with chicken shawarma, accompanied by a side of fries. The overall quality of the food was good, although it is a challenge to find establishments that truly excel in preparing fattoush salad. However, I must express my disappointment with the pricing, which led me to deduct three stars from my rating. At a cost of $22.23, I found it difficult to justify the expense, especially when the foundation of their salad is 65% lettuce, if not more. Additionally, the portion of chicken atop the salad was rather small! In all honesty, I could easily procure the ingredients and recreate the dish at home for a SIGNIFICANTLY lower cost. It appears that restaurants now are taking advantage of current economic circumstances, citing inflation as a rationale for their exorbitant prices. It’s very plausible that certain establishments are leveraging inflation as a pretext for inflating their profits, and it is rather unlikely that the restaurant owner would make an earnest effort to justify their pricing in a transparent manner. Truly a shame when food is the most fundamental aspect of...