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| - I want to be clear and start with I finally created a Yelp for the sole purpose of letting everybody know how dreadful this place is. I grew up in an Italian family on one side and a Lebanese family on the other. I'm quite familiar with, and a big fan off, all foods that fall under the large "Mediterranean" umbrella, so I have no bias against this style of food. Though I am no expert in Turkish food, I did have the experience of eating at this location when it was called Dervish (or something similar to that). At the time I found it a little pricey to frequent regularly but not too bad for what it was. It had a freshness and "authentic" quality about it that wasn't quite enough to justify it's price tag but it was pretty good nonetheless. I waited some time after it changed hands to Istanbul to give the new brand a chance to work out the bugs and growing pains of opening a new restaurant. tried it this evening. I ordered the Chicken Shish Kabob with yogurt and tomato butter sauce. I asked if the dish would come with any bread. The waitress said that they brought out bread before the meal. I asked if my dish specifically came with the bread that was offered under the side dishes or should I order a side. She said it would come with bread on the side. It did not, it came with croutons mixed inside of it. Unseasoned, white, croutons. The bread that was brought prior to our dishes coming out was stale. It came with two sides of sauce. One was a passable tzatziki sauce which was a little heavy on the dill but o.k.. The other was a cold, canned tomato sauce with crushed red peppers in it and no other discernible flavor. It was a little gross. My wife ordered the Vegetarian Saute. It came with a side of rice and was hot. I mention this because my dish did not come with a side of rice (for 15.99 I feel it ought to have) nor was it hot. It was lukewarm. The Vegetarian Saute for $13.99 was edible, though it did taste to me almost exactly like Campbell's canned Vegetable Soup- which is pretty good, but not 13.99 good if you not what I mean. My Kabob dish was lukewarm, parts of it cold. It came smothered in a sauce that tasted just like the canned garbage that came with the bread minus the crushed red peppers so had even less flavor. It was poured over plain white yogurt that had been drizzled over my chicken. There were these white crouton chunks scattered about the dish. There were a FEW pieces of green pepper an onions. The chicken itself had grill marks on it however while the outside was luke warm (parts of it were actually cold where cold yogurt had been heaped on it) the center was cold suggesting it had been cooked long before and then re-heated, explaining 7 minute turn-around time to get it out after we ordered. The chicken was gamey at best. I stole some of my wife's rice (I would have asked for my own but nobody every returned to our table) to put the chicken on and mix in some of the yogurt and "sauce" that came on it. It was terrible. I added a bunch of salt, pepper, and some of the tzatziki sauce left over from the stale bread and ate a few bites because I was starving at the time. Though it had more flavor than when it first came out it was not enough to mask how disgusting it tasted. There is really no other word more descriptive than "disgusting" to convey how it was. I would have liked to maybe send it back to try something else but nobody ever came back to our table. It was 7:45 on a Monday night, two other tables that had already been served, and with a host and two servers nobody came back to ask how the food was, refill our drinks, or ask if there was anything else we needed. My wife ate some of hers because she was hungry as well and it was far more edible than mine. We mostly just sat there with full dishes of food in front of us for what seemed like ages before I angrily looked around my shoulder at the group of employees standing by the register and caught somebody's attention. Our waitress came over and asked how everything was. "Not very good," I said and looked at my full plate of food. "Oh, that's too bad!" She said. "Can I bring you a box?" She followed. "No". So she brought the check without saying a word, not a sorry, not a "is there anything else I can get you?", not a, "here, let me see if I can get this fellow that's been standing here doing nothing all night who appears to be the owner or manager because he frequently goes outside on his phone and comes in looking angry but still does nothing to perhaps comp some of the meal for you". Full bill, full price for everything, still no refill on even our water, takes my card, brings it back without saying thank-you. We left and as we're walking out she musters a "Have a good day.". I can tolerate bad customer service if the food is exceptional. I can tolerate mediocre food if the atmosphere is nice and the service is exceptional. I can not fathom why anybody, anywhere, ever, would want to come to this restaurant.
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