Falafel King - Minneapolis

Where do I start? You put your order in at the counter. The cashier says he will bring you the food. You see the food is for the most part prepared and sitting in trays behind the glass, ready to be scooped. Typical of a place that serves gyros, there are two rotisseries with meat ready to be shaved off. So you think it's going to take but a moment, especially when there's only a few customers.

We grab a table and we sit there for about 7 minutes and we're thinking it's already too long. So we go up to the counter and watch for a few minutes. We see food being scooped out and it's looking good. We believe it's ours, watching the server/preparer place the items enticingly on the plate. Except that it's not. The cashier takes the plates and gives it to the table next to where we seated ourselves. He comes back as we continue to watch the server/preparer work on the next order, believing its ours. We watch for a few more minutes as the server/preparer seems flustered by our presence. The cashier tells us he'll bring our food to us so we return to our table.

I don't intend to eavesdrop but I'm listening to determine if they talk about the food. They're slowly picking at the food without enthusiasm. They make small talk and they seem to just going through the motion of eating, doing it for the sake of filling their stomachs rather than for enjoyment.

Another set of customers have ordered and sit at the table to our right. Tick tock, tick tock, sounds the clock. Scrooge Squared is getting impatient and she rarely does. It seems 10 minutes rolls along. These customers get their food before we do. WTF??? They sit and eat silently. I get the same feeling watching them as I do watching the customers to our left. They eat because they paid for it and damn if they don't seem to have the same joyless expressions and body language as the other customers. They aren't saying anything about the food.

So our food finally arrives maybe another 10 minutes after this. I really don't know if that's right or not but every passing minute seemed longer than the next. This better be worth the wait and the cost. See the platter above? A penny short of ten bucks. Falafel, hummus, baba ghanoush, salad, salad and fries. In the background with a third of a plate shown is a gyro for $8.

The falafel is hard on the outside. The inside is pistachio green and more dry than moist. It's mildly flavorful and I'm ashamed to share it after telling Scrooge Squared how much I liked falafel. It's lukewarm at best. Grade: C- because after making me wait that long, it should have be mouth burning hot. Hummus: It tastes thin and lacks complexity. Grade: C. Baba Ghanoush was probably the best thing on the plate. Grade: B-. Fries: Grade C.

I grabbed a slice of the gyro meat. Not bad but relatively speaking, this is the lowest grade gyro I've had in the TC area. Grade: C.

Bottom line: Grade C isn't terrible but I expect at least Grade B food when I eat out. As far as the service goes, it gets a Grade D+ on a curve. If Jeff Foxworthy were here, he'd make them look into the camera and say "We're Falafel King and we're not smarter than Fifth Graders."


701 W Lake St
Minneapolis, MN