I was on my own for lunch today, so I sallied forth to a place that recently opened up near my office, the Pita Jungle, which has taken over the spot that was once occupied by the now-defunct Off-The-Grill.
Since Off-The-Grill was configured for an order at the counter and sit down in one of the 5 tables, I was surprised that they’d managed to greatly increase the seating area and was a proper “sit down†restaurant. They had both inside and outside seating and Arizona’s total smoking ban that went into effect yesterday means there wasn’t a bad seat in the house; however, I chose to sit inside since it reached 103º this past weekend.
My first sign that this might not be my typical “I love any kind of flatbread with grilled meat on it†experience was when I noticed the menu said, “Natural Healthful Vegetarian Cuisine.†I was mortified, but I remembered a review over at FeastingInPhoenix.com that clearly mentioned gyros and chicken, so this is some new “loose†definition of the word “vegetarian†that I was not previously aware of. I am gratified to know that, by that same definition, McDonald’s is also a “vegetarian†restaurant.
A quick check of the menu revealed that all was well, there were beef, chicken and seafood dishes on the menu.
I chose the Mediterranean Roasted Chicken (Shawarma) because I’d never met a Shawarma I didn’t like. It was only $5.75 and was described as “Grilled marinated chicken breast in a pita, with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, garlic sauce and tahini.†A Dr. Pepper was $2.25, which is just outrageous!
When the pita arrived (sans tomato, at my request) it looked wonderful: chock full of fine looking chunks of grilled chicken and slathered down with the garlic and tahini sauces.
One of the pieces of chicken had fallen off the top and had not come in contact with the sauce. I picked it up, popped it into my mouth and discovered something truly unique: I had finally met a shawarma I didn’t like. It wasn’t quite repulsive, per se, but it had an odd, unpleasant flavor in the spicing. I was glad that the pita had plenty of sauce to mask the flavor of the chicken.
Another weird thing: the pita wasn’t fresh. You’d think a place named “Pita Jungle†would at least serve fresh pitas.
Time to come clean, somehow, of all the various Mediterranean and Middle Eastern sauces I’ve eaten (and enjoyed) I must have never had tahini before. My apologies to fans of tahini, but it is repulsive. I could barely choke my meal down. It was only the unlimited refills of my massive over-priced Dr. Pepper that got me through 3/4 of the pita before I gave up and cut my loses.
It’s hard to describe the tahini sauce, it reminded me of nothing more than having my pita covered in hummus. I do not like hummus. Luckily, it did not look like hummus, which has all the culinary visual appeal of the contents of my son’s diapers. Turns out tahini is actually one of the major ingredients in hummus. Well, live and learn, I can’t blame Pita Jungle for my ignorance of the clearly-labelled ingredients, but it did make for a memorably bad-tasting meal.
Apologies to hummus and tahni fans.
I can’t blame them for my personal dislike of the toppings, but what I can blame them for is what happened next.
My bill was $8.65 and I was paying with cash, which I rarely do, and I put a $10 in the bill holder. (Has that little black fold over thing got a proper name?) My plan was the use the change to tip my waitress who, despite my dislike of the food, was attentive, pleasant and efficient. $8.65 * 15% = $1.30 and since the change was to be $1.35, that seemed perfectly equitable to me.
The problem is, I never communicated that to my waitress. She came and got that nameless black folder over thing and my $10 and took it back to the register. I could see her in the large mirror that dominates one wall. I saw her ring up the amount, put the $10 in the register, take the $1.35 change out, put it in her pocket and then returned that nameless black fold over thing to the pile for reuse.
She’s lucky my wife wasn’t there because there’d have been blood running down the aisles if she’d seen her take the liberty to decide that must have been her tip. The fact that I was fully planning on giving her the change is not an acceptable excuse. She couldn’t possibly have known that, and there are those (my wife included) who would go so far as to say that was outright theft.
Nonetheless, between the not-fresh pita, the odd-flavored chicken, over-priced soft drinks and the inexcusable behavior of the staff, (and not because of the revolting tahini sauce) Pita Jungle is forever off my list of restaurants. Maybe they just had a bad day, but that kind of screw-up prevents me from giving them a “I should try them twice to be fair†visit.
This constituted one of the three memorably bad meals I’ve had in my life. The last being in about 1986 at the Two Pesos, a once-popular mexican (thankfully now-defunct) food place near ASU, which just goes to show that college students really have no taste and a little mom and pop Mexican food place in Las Cruces, New Mexico sometime back in the early 1970’s that was actually able to screw up a bean tostada by, I can only assume, not cleaning the dirt off the beans before cooking them.
I never forget these things.
I’m disheartened though that there was a long line of sheeple waiting to get into the restaurant for lunch. I’m afraid they won’t go out of business fast enough at this rate.
Pita Jungle
4340 E Indian School Rd
Phoenix AZ
Not recommended.
Technorati Tags: Blog, Phoenix, Restaurant, Review
Pita Jungle is a fabulous restaurant! And quite frankly, I find it difficult to take any kind of food review of a Middle Eastern restaurant from an individual who doesn’t know what tahini is or what hummus is made of and more importantly, does not like hummus. Perhaps this reviewer should stick to Pizza Huts thin crust meat lovers pizza if the main motivation is flat bread with meat on it at least this way you’ll know exactly what you are getting and what it is made of… cause it comes straight from the factory.
Additionally, I find it hard to believe Pita Jungle is going anywhere but up, as the Indian School location is now the 4th addition to their restaurants across the Valley.
Last but certainly not least, this “reviewer” is cheap. Have you ever dined at a restaurant before? If $1.30 is coming back to you from the $10 bill you put down, say, “keep the change” or “thank you.” Don’t fool yourself into thinking you are a connoisseur because you once at at “Two Pesos”.
In fact, thanks for your “two pesos” on Pita Jungle, I’d like change.
Pita Jungle is a fabulous restaurant! And quite frankly, I find it difficult to take any kind of food review of a Middle Eastern restaurant from an individual who doesn’t know what tahini is or what hummus is made of and more importantly, does not like hummus. Perhaps this reviewer should stick to Pizza Huts thin crust meat lovers pizza if the main motivation is flat bread with meat on it at least this way you’ll know exactly what you are getting and what it is made of… cause it comes straight from the factory.
Additionally, I find it hard to believe Pita Jungle is going anywhere but up, as the Indian School location is now the 4th addition to their restaurants across the Valley.
Last but certainly not least, this “reviewer” is cheap. Have you ever dined at a restaurant before? If $1.30 is coming back to you from the $10 bill you put down, say, “keep the change” or “thank you.” Don’t fool yourself into thinking you are a connoisseur because you once at at “Two Pesos”.
In fact, thanks for your “two pesos” on Pita Jungle, I’d like change.
I am more than happy to post your comments so others can see that some people obviously do like Pita Jungle, and I’m relieved that the others eating there might not have been having a bad a meal as I did.
I don’t hold Pita Jungle accountable for tahini sauce being revolting. That’s an issue of personal taste, which I completely take responsibility/blame for. I don’t particularly like ground up sesame seeds.
Despite your assertion, however, it is not necessary to like every item of a particular cuisine to enjoy the other aspects of that cuisine.
Hummus may be revolting to me, that does not mean all middle eastern food is revolting to me.
That fact that I was unaware that tahini sauce was a major constituent of hummus only demonstrates that when I first tried hummus 20 years ago my reaction wasn’t, “My good golly, gosh that’s awful. I shall now go memorize the ingredient list of this horrific dish so that I shall never accidentally eat any part of this again.”
My actual reaction was, “Yuck. OK, hummus is a no go from this point forward.”
What I do hold Pita Jungle accountable for is (1) a stale pita and (2) the chicken was not particularly good.
In a dish that consisted of pita, chicken, sauce and vegetable matter, having both the pita and the chicken being not good (I’m not even counting the sauce) is… not good.
If it had been good, I might come back and ordered another one without the tahini sauce, but the rest of it just wasn’t very good and I didn’t go there for the lettuce and pickle. (I should have mentioned, I quite liked the pickle. Pickle fans rejoice at Pita Jungle!)
To compensate for this wholly unsatisfying experience, I went to nearby Elie’s Deli the next day which is infinitely better.
As for being cheap, no, that wasn’t the issue.
A 15% tip is not cheap. The waitress was attentive and pleasant, but it wasn’t particularly outstanding service. I would not have considered giving her either less than 15% ($1.30) nor any more than 20% ($1.73). The service didn’t really warrant 20%, but I’ll often tip up to that point for even ordinary service if the maths work out favorably.
(Here’s the wikipedia entry on tipping at a restaurant in the US if you’re unfamiliar with the practice.)
The point was, it was not the waitress’ prerogative to take it without permission. Had she not taken the money when I was otherwise occupied, I would have told her to keep it.
I was looking to my right at the people working at the grill and she came up behind me from the left and took the money and was gone before I could turn around. She didn’t give me the opportunity to say, “thank you” or “keep the change.”
Under those circumstances, it isn’t her right to play mind-reader and decide that’s what I was going to give her, and it was clear she wasn’t coming back to the table, either.
I am more than happy to post your comments so others can see that some people obviously do like Pita Jungle, and I’m relieved that the others eating there might not have been having a bad a meal as I did.
I don’t hold Pita Jungle accountable for tahini sauce being revolting. That’s an issue of personal taste, which I completely take responsibility/blame for. I don’t particularly like ground up sesame seeds.
Despite your assertion, however, it is not necessary to like every item of a particular cuisine to enjoy the other aspects of that cuisine.
Hummus may be revolting to me, that does not mean all middle eastern food is revolting to me.
That fact that I was unaware that tahini sauce was a major constituent of hummus only demonstrates that when I first tried hummus 20 years ago my reaction wasn’t, “My good golly, gosh that’s awful. I shall now go memorize the ingredient list of this horrific dish so that I shall never accidentally eat any part of this again.”
My actual reaction was, “Yuck. OK, hummus is a no go from this point forward.”
What I do hold Pita Jungle accountable for is (1) a stale pita and (2) the chicken was not particularly good.
In a dish that consisted of pita, chicken, sauce and vegetable matter, having both the pita and the chicken being not good (I’m not even counting the sauce) is… not good.
If it had been good, I might come back and ordered another one without the tahini sauce, but the rest of it just wasn’t very good and I didn’t go there for the lettuce and pickle. (I should have mentioned, I quite liked the pickle. Pickle fans rejoice at Pita Jungle!)
To compensate for this wholly unsatisfying experience, I went to nearby Elie’s Deli the next day which is infinitely better.
As for being cheap, no, that wasn’t the issue.
A 15% tip is not cheap. The waitress was attentive and pleasant, but it wasn’t particularly outstanding service. I would not have considered giving her either less than 15% ($1.30) nor any more than 20% ($1.73). The service didn’t really warrant 20%, but I’ll often tip up to that point for even ordinary service if the maths work out favorably.
(Here’s the wikipedia entry on tipping at a restaurant in the US if you’re unfamiliar with the practice.)
The point was, it was not the waitress’ prerogative to take it without permission. Had she not taken the money when I was otherwise occupied, I would have told her to keep it.
I was looking to my right at the people working at the grill and she came up behind me from the left and took the money and was gone before I could turn around. She didn’t give me the opportunity to say, “thank you” or “keep the change.”
Under those circumstances, it isn’t her right to play mind-reader and decide that’s what I was going to give her, and it was clear she wasn’t coming back to the table, either.