Before I start, you should know that the following write-up is more of a pleading. Al Noor is a Middle Eastern restaurant located on Washtenaw in Ypsilanti, MI that has made a closed down Taco Bell building its home. The arched windows in front completely give this away. Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor are blessed with great Middle Eastern food, ranging from a handful of Middle Eastern groceries to a variety of Middle Eastern restaurants. Al Noor isn’t my favorite- that distinction goes to Jerusalem Garden in Ann Arbor. However, Al Noor does make perfectly respectable Middle Eastern food at good prices. The reason I write this is not to compliment Al Noor on its food, although I will do that. This also is not intended to completely bash the restaurant, which I will also do. I simply want to raise awareness about a good restaurant that will be closed if something isn’t done about the customer service.
Al Noor offers some of the most hilariously bad service I have ever been a witness to. Whoever is responsible for running this business is either completely incompetent or has no idea what is going on in the day to day operation. It surprised me even more when I found out that Al Noor had been purchased by someone three years ago who promised renovations to the business. This new owner has either since died, or moved out of the country and left the restaurant to his 11 year old son. The service is that bad.
I often go in to find random friends of the cashier hanging out in the booths. This wouldn’t bother me, but they often stare as you as you consume your food. They are either very interested in my food, or thinking about adding me to the “Missed Connections” portion of Craigslist. It creeps me out every time I go in.
Another major party foul is that every time I have asked for no tomatoes on my chicken shawarma, there are indeed tomatoes when I bite into it. There aren’t many things that piss me off, but when I ask someone to subtract tomatoes from my food and they do not, it sure does get my blood boiling. I am a firm believer that when one a tomato touches something, its residue has destroyed it. Don’t get me wrong, I love tomatoes, but not on certain foods.
I walked in today to order my usual, a chicken shawarma and a bowl of crushed lentil soup. I have resorted to telling the cashier that I am deathly allergic to tomatoes. This gets me my shawarma without the little red guys about 40% of the time. When I first walked in, there were no employees in sight. I stood there for about five minutes, and seriously considered stealing a tub of garlic sauce and hummus from the back. Before I could work up the courage, I saw a car pull up. Damn, another customer had foiled my great idea. A man got out of the car, walked in the door, stepped behind the counter, and asked me what I wanted to eat. Yes, this restaurant had been unoccupied with the doors unlocked for god knows who long. I gave him my order, and he began to fumble around the kitchen. I noticed that the soup warmer was sitting open, which alarmed me a little bit. I decided to take a seat because of the usual long wait time. I was on my Blackberry when I heard the beep of a microwave. I suddenly realized that the soup warmer was not working, and the soup was simply sitting in an uncovered container. I had my food about five minutes after I ordered it , which was a new Al Noor record. Congratulations, guys. Upon ringing me up, I had to point to the cashier where the two items I ordered were on the menu so he could find the prices. He then proceeded to add them up on a calculator and forget to include the sales tax. Whoops! $6.50 for soup an sandwich, not bad. When I got to work, I opened up my shawarma to find NO TOMATOES! That certainly meant that it was going to be a good day. I took my first bite, and realized that the sandwich was ice cold. I then put it together. We had a widespread power outage last night, and Al Noor also lost theirs. Either they were serving food from last night, and/or they simply had not gotten their power working yet and decided to open their doors regardless. I decided to eat the sandwich (i’ll take my chances, more on that later), but the soup went into the trash.
Moving past the sometimes comedic bad service, unlike a number of other local places that have similar menus, the food here is not just inexpensive, but very unique to this particular restaurant. The garlic sauce is amazingly potent, with the kind of breath-destroying power that would be a detriment if it wasn’t so delicious. You could seriously put this stuff on watermelon and it could probably be good. The chicken and beef wraps (both tawook and shwarma) are fantastic, almost at Jeresulum Garden level. The hummus is some of the best I have ever had. Do not skip the hummus. Yes, you may be trying to cut back and save a few calories, but Al Noor’s hummus is well worth the indulgence. When you’re talking hummus, some places go heavy on the garlic, some heavy on the tahini. Al Noor actually goes kind of heavy on the lemon, but not in a bad way. It’s a little unusual to get a hummus this creamy and lemony, but It comes out extremely delicious and arrives at your table drizzled with olive oil and dotted with olives. A basket overflowing with packages of pita triangles accompanies it.
The reason I write this is because of that delicious food that you will eventually receive after a long wait and more than likely given something you did not order. Their terrible service is almost completely excused by it, but it seems as though their customers have almost given up on them. The last four or five times I have visited, I have been the only one there for spans of 20-25 minutes. With the heavy competition in the area, there’s no doubt that Al Noor will be forced to close their doors if some attention is not paid to customer service. I always want to find a way to contact the owner, but no website or contact information exists. I will have to stock up on their garlic sauce just in case this day does come, and I am forced to live without it.
If you have some time, it is almost entertaining to see how incompetent the people are who are running the restaurant. It is sad in a way, but I feel as though the food deserves some sort of support.
Comments
6 responses to “Al Noor – Ypsilanti, MI”
Hilarious, yet informative. Good move on the soup = garbage can! I go to a few places that are dirtier than I wish they would be, but the food is great so I end up going back. I love the part where the doors were unlocked and the guy just came strolling in.
I agree, al noor is really great-but the service is so grossly bad that I have to build up my confidence before I go in just so I can prepare myself for the social beating I’m going to get when I’m in there. Damn those “friends” they make me feel like such a poser for eating hummus. I really like hummus. I’m no poser damnit.
Some places seem to concentrate on the service and not the food…I’ll gladly take the opposite.
I just drove there yesterday and found it closed. Reading your story and remembering the last time I was there when they were open, it all makes sense. The cashier was begging someone on the phone (possibly the manager)to come out and fix the cash register. Very interested to find out what happened….
I used to go there quite a bit and it was amazing. Service was great, food was great. Then, about a year or a year and a half ago it seemed the owners changed. The food was hit or miss (often miss, because it’d be WAY overcooked and taste horrible), the service was BEYOND slow, their credit card reader barely worked (no, honestly lady, the 3 cards I gave you aren’t all bad. I just used one 5 minutes ago). Not to mention, when I said to manually punch it in she told me she wasn’t allowed to do that because the “owner got very, very mad when she did that because of the additional fee.”
Good riddance.
I used to be an employee of Al Noor and predicted it’s closure when I quit in December of 2008. Talib, the owner, was incompetent and cheap and I’m amazed that he managed to keep the business running as long as he did. I was constantly having to call him and wait for simple things like, say, CHANGE.
Almost immediately after I started working there, we ran out of Coke syrup. What did he do? Nothing. Nothing at all. I told him to replace it and he bitched at me about how expensive it is to replace (bullshit). Customers were actually upset by the lack of coke. Not long after we ran out of CO2. He didn’t replace those either. It took him over a month and a half to go out and buy CANS of pop and he bitched about that the whole time too! (this, despite the fact that he was making a profit, hand over fist, off his first can of pop).
November hit and the furnace went out with the first cold snap. Instead of calling a professional, he got some cut-rate guy who looked like he was 70. We had no heat for WEEKS. Not once did he shut the restaurant down so it could be properly repaired. Instead, he brought in space and kerosene heaters! I finally called it quits on that place in December. I won’t even go into the health and safety hazards and the fact that this man, who is old enough to be my father, continually hit on me.
I told all my friends that the place was not going to make it through 2009 and received a phone call from a friend in mid July that it was closed. I drove by on my way to work (where I don’t have to nag the boss to do simple shit like get us toilet paper and buy bread!) and laughed my ass off. I’m not a vindictive person, and, besides the owner, I loved my staff, but that feeling of schadenfreude over someone getting their just desserts is too much to resist sometimes.
I just miss the food. They had the best hummus. Most restaurants just dress up the canned stuff. They actually made it with real chick peas and lots of tasty garlic.