Haifa Cafe

The half chicken is delicious!
The service is a little slow
It’s a carry out place that serves fast Middle Eastern food, nothing more nothing less.
Food is on point for the most part.

Don’t bother. Keep walking. Don’t waste a dime or your time on this dump, especially if you like middle eastern food. Uninviting décor, unfriendly service, less than mediocre food. I ducked into the hot dog joint next door on my way back to work to overcome the flavor and dissapointment of Haifa Café.

I’ve been to Haifa 4 times, and every time it’s a different experience. The customer service is terrible, but the food can be pretty good. I recommend the half chicken; its pretty tasty and comes with pita and rice (but you have to ask them to microwave the pita else they’ll give it to you cold). Also make sure they have hummus that day before you order; this one time, they didn’t have it and I had to make do with jerusalem salad. The prices are quite low though; and the seating area is okay. The main convenience is the location really.

I read the reviews on this place and went there with the best of intentions. I am sorry I did. This place to start with is a dump. Should have known better. The food is terrible, mushy and bland and quite frankly I am concerned I will become ill. Do not go here.

Did I go here for the ambiance? No. Was I expecting a fine or trendy dining experience? No. I stopped in to grab a falafel sandwich on the way to Jay Pritzker Pavilion to see the Chaka Khan 40^th anniversary of her career and 60 yr old bday bash to celebrate Chaka Khan Day. The show was fantastic and the sandwich made it even better.
The sandiwch was fresh, flavorful and the owner (and son?) engaging and nice. A handsome guy hit on me outside the place. What else could a girl want for $ 5?

The worst quality food I have ever had, the employees literally do not speak English well enough. The floors are sticky and there are flies. The worst part of it all was I got approached by two homeless people while eating inside to see if I could spare some food. Nothing was done about that. I would encourage you to stay away from Haifa café if at all possible. Ben Yehuda on Lasalle is far better quality and service. I am surprised this place even makes health code.

Great falafel sandwich. Nothing too fancy.

Will your feet kinda stick to the floor? Yes. Are they often out of things like Coke and rice? Sure. Is the falafel delicious and perfectly moist and spicy, is the schwerma tender and sweet, and is the pita soft and warm? Yes yes yes! Take a chance; this place is great. The Loop needs more of this in my opinion
Cheap as hell too.

This place is comically bad. Dirty, no one seems to know what is going on and I have been there several times when they were out of falafel, for hours at a time. For a place that offers a groupon for falafel sandwiches that is just unacceptable. The food is fine, not great, not terrible. but the customer service is just beyond bad.

Worst lunch I ever had– Shawerma Sandwich. Chicken and condiments inside a pita bread– Luckily I opened the pita and saw the chicken before I took a bite. ‘Chicken’ was mostly huge pieces of fat– if I had bitten into it as a sandwich would have gagged.
Unbelievable.

Went here w/​a Groupon deal ($ 3.00 for falafel sandwich). This sandwhich is easy to perfect, but anyways. here it goes —
— Walked in. Place looks extremely dirty. Kitchen area is sorta clean, but i saw chicken just sitting there on the grill… weird.
— Dude did not even ask me if I wanted to get my pita warm
— Falafel is super non-​firm and tastes old
— Sauce w/​it is tasteless
Also, when I asked for hot sauce on it… he gave me a dumb look. He didnt ask me if I wanted anything else in the sandwich.
Needless to say… lame place and would never go here.

Had my lunch in busy moment food is decent just look little run down actually humus very good and shawarma moist.

Nabbed a living social deal and decided to take a long walk to check this place out.
Ordered a steak skewer in advance, and arrived ten minutes early to find that the steak hadn’t been grilled yet, as he wanted it to be as fresh as possible. Waited around until 12:15 before receiving my meal to go (long wait) while receiving updates every 5 minutes or so from the owner. Here’s the results:
Steak — even after sitting on the grill that long, surprisingly super tender! Very beefy, and actually quite good.
Baba Ghanoush — nice flavor, not overly strong, and a tasty side to the well seasoned steak.
Jerusalem Salad — Refreshing and tasty. Tastes like it was freshly made that day.
Falafel — this was actually quite a surprise… crisp on the outside, airy and flavorful on the inside. Excellent falafel!
Verdict: For a restaurant that looks rundown and down trodden, don’t be fooled… the food is good, and the price is reasonable! I’d come back if I was in the area, just not for a business meal with any important clients…

Stopped in here on a suggestion.
I found this place not to my liking in terms of hygiene and food. It was not a very clean place in appearance.
Forged ahead and ordered Chicken Shawrama. Had a bad feeling looking at it, had a bite, came to my senses, pitched it out and bailed.
How anyone can go there is a mystery to me. How anyone can go there and rate more than a one is a greater mystery.

Ducked in here to get out of the rain. It was about 1 PM on a Sunday and it was pretty empty. The chicken was pretty moist and the rice was really good, all for a pretty decent price considering the amount of food you get. Service was fast and the place was clean. Maybe the only downside is that they have plastic/​flimsy cutlery, which made it kind of hard to eat.

This place is geared toward the afternoon lunch crowd. When I came in at around 4 pm it was completely dead. I had a Groupon now deal for a falafel sandwich for $ 3. The falafel was freshly made and was crispy. The ingredients looked fresh and the service was okay. Groupon’s now deal makes this place A-​OK.

I really wanted Haifa café to do great, especially since Middle Eastern food is one of my favorite kinds of cuisine in the world. And especially because this is right next to my office.
But you walk into a place with graffiti that’s been on the door for weeks and you instantly know that the owner doesn’t care about this place. The service is really super slow. It’s like since it isn’t lunch rush they figure you have all the time to spare. And I just really gave up on this place when they wanted to charge me $ 3 for a tiny styrofoam dish of hummus, and then they don’t even bother to splash a little lemon, olive oil, or fresh parsley on there. Nothing fresh about it.
I get the impression that it might be good for the chicken, which on their sign is «roast fowl.» I don’t eat chicken though, so I’ll pass on Haifa. Very happy for the arrival of Falafil down the block.

Truly an understated lunch spot… they do a great chicken shwarma… loaded up with plenty of chicken and all the toppings… tahini, veggies, hummus, lettuce, etc.
They even do breakfast, but I haven’t done that yet. Keep forgetting. Seems like a new place and eager to please. The falafel is overly fried, however.

Good and getting better! Clearly the owners are Unilocal readers. Every meal I have seen served recently included a full piece of pita bread and they have removed (hopefully not temporarily) the warming bins. The shawarma and gyros are shaved fresh and delicious. They still leave out the falafel that is included on most of their specials but they are getting better and the food overall is great.

Maybe he was just having an off day. The first guy in the serving line had the demeanor of someone who might’ve just barely escaped from the pages of a novel set in Stalinist Russia. «Plate, sandwich» he asked gruffly, without bothering to conjunct, let alone inflect the end of, his question. Just then he started humming, and for a split second I was hopeful about his future. Until I realized that what he was humming was not so much a song, but more like the sound check for a heavy metal band.
The thing is, it always feels like an off day at Haifa Café, where the afternoon’s entertainment is usually some massive confusion about someone’s order that ends up tying up all three or four people on staff while the growing queue of customers is waited on by no one.
But once I get out of there with my takeout, I’m generally satisfied with the result, especially the tasty chicken schawarma– which seems to handily beat out its competitors on the next street over. Good enough to make my downtown work day lunch rotation, at least until the year 2025, when Detroit’s Bucharest Café will figure out how to deliver its delicious schawarma to me in Chicago by chicken fax.