The Halal Guys - Los Angeles, CA (DTLA)

Work wife told me she has never had The Halal Guys before and there was one in downtown. I have been to the one in Costa Mesa and thought it was ok so I decided to tag along to see how she liked it.

Since we didn't know how busy they might get, we decided to make an online order. That was actually cool to have online order available for us to skip the line. On their website, it said the order came with 2 packets of white sauce and 1 packet of red sauce. They also had the same sauces that were not in the packets at the restaurant to make the platter. We wanted to know if we could have those sauces pouring on our food and still get the packets, so we called them to verify.

According to work wife, she was given attitude by them saying they don't take online orders at all, then they said there was no such order even though we were charged already. She told them we made the order on THEIR website to THEIR store, and she was told to check the number and call that store, which was the same number she called... Sigh... We called back again 5 minutes later and got a different person, and magically, the order was there and everything was cool. Guys in Halal really know their stuff...

We both got the combo platter. The pick up time was 11:30 and we were at the front door at 11:30. Our order was not ready for another 5 minutes. Sure it was only 5 minutes, but the restaurant was fairly empty so there was really no excuse for the delay.

The combo platter came with beef, chicken, chopped tomatoes, lettuce, some pita bread and rice. The white sauce was required if you wanted any flavors at all. The red sauce was really spicy so proceed with caution. My major issue was the chicken. While I appreciated the chicken being chunky, it was so dry. Soooooo dry that two packets of white sauce later I still had a hard time to swallow them down. The beef had a nice flavor but the chicken was just bland and not desirable. At the end of the meal, I was full but far from satisfied.

Overall experience not impressed. Not the service, not the food. If you just want to be full, this could be the place for you. Maybe the experience could be different in other locations.