Aladdin Hillcrest — Restaurant in San Diego

Let me start off by saying I grew up eating Lebanese food and I am very familiar with it.

The food was ok. The dolma (grape leaves) were terrible and I could barely get through one bite. The falafel was ok, but was very heavy and tasted greasy. I ordered lamb and I received very small lamb chops that were not super flavorful. The fries that came with the meal were the best item but needed some salt. The hummus was not good and needed lemon.

I was the only person in the restaurant. I went at around 6-7pm which is peak dinner time for restaurants. You can see in the video the restaurant was completely empty. There is no reason why I should have had such a sub par experience when I was the only guest in the restaurant. When I told my server, Abraham, about my dissatisfaction with the food he got defensive. Instead of wanting to give me a better experience, he told me that he knew the food was good; which insinuated that the problem was me not the restaurant. I spent about $63 after tip on two items. This was an over priced experienced for the quality of service you receive. The food portions are generous, but it does not match the taste value of the food.

This restaurant did not give me the experience I was hoping to have. I did not receive the same service others received and the server took his time before acknowledging me at all. The partiality was off-putting as a black African-American and came across as racist.

I do not recommend eating at this...

One of the Staples of Mediterranean food in the San Diego area. Aside from the regular kabobs and shawarma they offer some home cooking dishes. The four star is for something I'm mentioning at the end of the review. Three stars for taste. For two people we ordered $90 worth of food which brings me to the price it's about 30% more than average on all diahws. We ordered makloba which was cooked perfectly but the taste was bland. Portions huge not small like the picture. We also ordered the Mezza collection of appetizers which had meats in it and not only salads. Backlava with ice cream is decedent andbfresh. The reason for the four stars is our waitress Stephanie added 18% gratuity for two people at the end and when I asked why she said when you order over a certain amount we charge that even for 2 people which was ridiculous I asked her to remove it and she did.whether the owners know or don't know about this I don't like restaurants that don't have control over their servers. Service was good. You have to come try those home cooking flavors for yourself and my advice to the owners is to have a family style section for those huge portions and the regular section on the menu for one person portions....

I frequented this restaurant until today. I watched the waitress use her bare hands to take French fries out of a customer's plate and take it in the back and ate them. She then (believing I didn't see her the first time) took French fries out of my plate with her bare hands. I let her know that I saw her and she stated "they were falling off" I asked her for a fresh order. She took that order in the back and notified the chef, he then followed her where she took the last order covered it with a tray and tried to serve it to me again. I hate that they had such bad practices because I enjoyed the food here but this can not be unseen. If you don't have issues with the waitresses eating off your plate or touching your food with their bare hands then by all means eat here. If you have an issue with that type of stuff especially during COVID, DO NOT EAT HERE! Aladdin Hillcrest will never get another dime from me. I feel bad I should've told the other customer what the waitress did with her food ad well, I just walked out.

It happened today November...