Baladie Gourmet Cafe

Not what I expected, just a small little dingy kinda place. Just seems run down and not kept up with. Food wasn’t bad though so I’m that sense it was okay.

This was my first time here. I was really excited after reading reviews but I was disappointed. The service is poor. Maybe because they process orders fast. I ordered for chicken shawarma but instead they brought me lamb shawarma. The guy took awhile to agree exchanging it. The quality of food wasn’t good. The bread wasn’t fresh. The meat wasn’t fresh out of grill.
I wish I could give more than 3 stars although 3 might be too much.

This is a tiny busy restaurant in the FiDi. I have been eyeing it for the past couple of years but it always seemed super crowded and I never got a chance to try it until today. I was out for lunch early today and made it in.
Overall it was OK. The guy at the front was a little surly. I ordered the lamb and beef lavash sandwich. This is a big sandwich and was very filling. It was just OK, nothing great.

One of my favorite restaurants, I’ve visited Baladie Café over a number of years now.
Vegetarians: It is very easy to find something yummy here. My personal recommendations are for the veggie lavash, the lentil soup, and the Sahara salad (beets and oranges!)
Nick at the counter is always very friendly towards every customer I’ve seen him interact with, and the décor is fascinating to look upon. It’s also open somewhat late for Kearny Street, which is handy if you have a crunch day at work.

The shwarma plates are great, come with really good sides and you don’t really need to order anything else if you are getting that. However if you do order any sides, the mjdarra is excellent so are the spinach fatayer (pies) and they make a very good hummus. They also will platter large orders for parties/​events.

Really liked the sultans iron bowl — spinach, chicken and eggplant with rice all swimming in a delicious lentil soup. $ 8.55.

Wow! I just discovered this restaurant though UberEats and the Lamb and Beef plate was delicious. I never heard of this restaurant before and saw it got high reviews on Unilocal.The platter’s meat was pretty good, was loaded with veggies, and came with a side of pita bread for $ 10.33. I am definitely ordering from here again for lunch.

The food was delicious and healthy, friendly staff and great price. Definitely coming back

Just awful. I used to come here when it actually was decent. New owners have taken it downhill. Falafel was pre made, soggy and tasteless. It was stuffed with what looks like day old lettuce and a questionable tahini sauce. So sad to see this place fall apart!

My favorite place for shawarma in the city. Tasty, fresh ingredients, cool staff, and good value.

Food is awesome and the people who work/​run the places are equally as great

Food:
Got the chicken shawarma and really enjoyed it. It is really large so you can share with 2 people. We got it spicy and it had a nice amount of heat without being overdone. Very flavorful.
Service:
Quick service, great for a quick lunch run. We got our food to go and they wrapped it up nicely.
Ambiance:
Small. Not the cleanest, but not bad. They have a few tables but I wouldn’t plan to sit with a large group.

I love Mediterranean food. It is super close to my office, it is among the many restaurants lining a busy Kearny Street during the work week. Small, hole in the wall restaurant with limited seating inside and a few tables outside.
Baladie features most of the classics mezze, falafel, shawarma but also other treats, such as fattoush ~a bread and vegetable salad, mejaddara ~lentils and rice and pies made of olive oil dough stuffed with spinach, feta, and spiced meats simply delicious.
It is affordable and fast if you want decent Greek food. My favorites are the:
~Lentil Soup, you can get it with rice it is flavorful and hearty
~Spanakopita Vegetarian Pie
~Shawarma Lavash — the lamb and beef with hummus, tahini, lettuce, tomato & cucumbers is something I always get. Very filling, I split it in half and eat the other half for dinner
~Iron Bowl — rice with lentil, spinach topped with chicken, tasty combination of flavors and spice
~Mojadara Platter– Hot lentil and rice with caramelized onions, yogurt cucumber salad and 1 pita and I get it with chicken for extra charge. (They put a little too much chicken which overpowers the dish, but in general still very good.)
It’s a place where you can get party platters and salads for parties and catering. For the price not bad at all and a place I get most of my lunches to get me through the work week. Consistently delicious and reasonable! Four stars!

It was my lucky day. I ordered a shawarma and it came with a strand of hair.
I clearly ordered it without hair. I think.
Check out my other amazing reviews at
Update: Thank you for your reply, Nick. Health inspection is good. Shawarma inspection is not. I shall return some time and try again. If I should find another strand of hair when I come again, I will have my team of brilliant scientists figure out who it belongs to. If it belongs to you, then you and I will spend a weekend cleaning up your restaurant. Get ready. Thank you.

Really yummy big chicken shawerma for a great price, and staff was super friendly and helpful. I hear they do great catering, hoping to try it out as soon as the occasion calls for it… will check back in with update!

HEY YOU! Are you are looking for a Swarama with lots of quality roasted meat, fresh veggies and a sauce to die for! Well then, skip this place.
That is unless you are looking to spend some time catching up on some cabode reading or updating your Blackberry contacts, because that is exactly where you will be spending a great deal of time after eating at this so called «Gourmet Café».
It should be renamed, «The place to sucker local workers and their out of town friends with the case of the squirts»

I haven’t eaten here in a while (10+ years ago) and was hoping to experience the same quality of food that had me eating here 1 – 2 times a week when I worked downtown. I noticed right away that the owners are now different even though the interior and menu board are the same. The flavor of the Fatoush salad dressing is still pretty much the same, but there are some MAJOR downsides of the new régime’s changes compared to the original owner’s Fatoush salad.
— The feta I added on as an extra, they are the tiniest pieces of feta I have ever seen. The quality also seems pretty bad as the texture is like extra firm tofu. Super disappointing.
— There were some bad pieces of lettuce in my salad. The salad which consisted mostly of chopped romaine, but the smattering of other lettuce types were going bad, from the raddichio to what looked like baby chard.
— The pita bread that came with the salad was pretty thin, not like the original ones that used to come with the salad. Also the amount of za’atar inside was pathetic. The old pitas used to be slathered inside with a za’atar and oil mix and was very flavorful. This version isn’t worth the carb intake. So sad.
— The dolma that came with the salad was tasty, but very clumsily stuffed and rolled. It looked more like a dolma-​ball than a neatly created rice packet.
It is really sad to see long standing businesses get sold off to people who seem to just want to churn and burn for a buck. I may go back, but most likely I will just start making my own version of this salad as I will be able to control the quality of the ingredients.

Baladie has always been one of my favorite Mediterranean lunch spots but it’s a bit of a walk from my office so I don’t get there as much as I’d like. I went to Baladie for the first time in a while and was pretty disappointed.
I had the gyro platter which was filled with really dry bits of gyro meat. It almost had the texture of gyro jerky and I wonder if it was leftover meat from the previous day since I went to have lunch on the earlier side.
I won’t write Baladie off entirely since I have had other great meals there but I hope this was an isolated incident.

Is this really gourmet?
No.
It’s more like lunchroom cafeteria food.
Hard falafels, though everything else seemed to taste okay.
Decent hummus and yogurt cucumber salad.
At around $ 8 seemed a bit much for the portions considering the majority of it was lettuce.
Note to myself: Skip this Jack and grab a sandwich instead.

Clean shop, extensive menu, fair prices. Solid spot to satisfy your gyro craving. They close early so plan accordingly!
I tried the veggie deluxe gyro. Not amazing, but not bad. Just needed a little something to spice up the veggie overload. I’d go back but include some protein next time.