Al Hamra Restaurant

This place uses halal lamb and other meat. The chef, enam, is a great cook. Her food tastes like it is homemade. She is one of the best chefs ever. Of all time.

To be honest I did not taste most of the food in the buffet because of the appearance. It did not look very appealing (large bones, sad looking whole okras, tandoori chicken like pieces with raw skin on) — some of that food may have been great but I was not in the mood to take a risk based on the appearance…
This is what I tried: equivalent of Chicken biryani, Beef Biryani, a lamb/​beef curry dish and something like a beef dish in excess sour cream like sauce (not that great)… All the meat is bone in… No boneless dishes which is strange considering it was a weekend and most middle eastern cuisine always had boneless dishes like tikka, seekh kebabs/​Reshmi kebabs, tikia etc.
Both biryanis were excellent, especially the chicken biryani which tasted a lot like the Indian/​Pakistani biryani — if I ever go again it will be solely for the biryani.
Another complaint– being a weekend there was no dessert in the buffet. I did not order anything to drink, just the buffet and yet the cashier charged me a dollar extra for samosas (???)…

Love this place. Come during lunch the buffet is very good the staff is very friendly took my authentic Middle Eastern women reasonably priced and the food is always good I always get lunch for the guys at the shop

If I were to judge this place solely on their chicken briyani I would give it 4 stars. Rice was fluffy and tasty… and the chicken literally fell of the bone.
We had 3 different types of curry; both with beef and one with mutton. One of the beef curry tasted like nothing but salt. The other beef and mutton curry was tender but the taste was meh… let’s just say not memorable.
Then came my falafel sandwich. Pita bread was toasted into perfection. The falafel had a nice crunch to it but what happen to the flavor??? Again, I could only taste salt.
Either I need to get my taste buds checked or I just have low tolerance for salty food since I hardly eat fast food.
I would still love to be back to try the kebab and schwarma.

Visited Al Hamra today with a couple of co-​workers, this was our first time and it was very enjoyable. At first we were not sure if they were open but decided to go in anyway. When we went in there were only a few people dining and we were a little confused about the seating process. We ended up seating ourselves and the manager/​owner? came up and told us he was just finishing up remodeling or something. We were offered a few different menu items, mainly consisting of kabobs. I ended up having the beef kabob which was very good, it came served on a bed of rice with hummus and a small salad.
We will definitely go back for another try. Hopefully when we return he will have everything completed.
For my first visit I was very happy with the food and would recommend them.

I may have suffered a serious injury… but no matter. I will still force myself into writing this review. Just realize that I am taking a major hit for Unilocal because of this restaurant.
Just to clarify… This Arabic restaurant offers some traditional tea from the East… and it’s served in real stainless steel kettles that have paper towels around the handle. Well, I thought: how hot can the handle REALLY be… well, now I have a red handle shaped blister on my right index. Yes, if you order their delicious spiced tea, do yourself a favor and use the complimentary paper towel handle.
Ok, so now my self-​pity is done with… I can say I’ve had «arabic» food. I was really excited to see the word buffet, and even more exciting was the $ 7.99 sign right under it! Oddly, I had tasted most of their dishes somewhere or another… be it Pakistani cuisine, Turkish cuisine, Hungarian???, Lebanese, Greek, they pretty much fuse everything to make Arabic food, which I liked.
They had some schnitzel from the Hungarian side, dolmas from Greece, chicken Biyrani derived from Pakistan influences, Turkish stuffed cabbage, Lamb kabob from Lebanese, and pretty much anything ethnic you can think of. Also included was this creamy lemon soup, lentils+rice, beef and chickpea curry. These, however, I am not cultured to regionalize… yes regionalize is in my vocabulary. Nothing was really outrageously delicious, but for the variety, you can have little bites of the world, be satisfied, and pay less than $ 10.
Oh yeah, this little Middle East joint is housed inside one of the greatest places I’ve discovered in good ol’ conservative Arlington. A real halal import market. You’ve never seen so many brands of chickpeas, Eastern cheeses, or types of pita bread. All for cheap, too!
Eat your way through the war-​laden countries… in Arlington, Texas. Even I suffered some pain here.