Tabooleh - Coralville

This is a great Mediterranean restaurant grocery combined! The service was quick friendly. Food was great! We ordered the baba ganoush appetizer, falafel sandwich, and chicken tekka which can with salad the lentil soup. All was delicious, portions were generous, and staff was attentive. They carry lots of cooking supplies specialized ingredients in the grocery section as well. Would stop again!

Their food is badly old and stale, I got the lamb shank and the meat was so dry and tasteless, no salt, no pepper, no juice, no meat falling off the bone, just one hard piece of old meat heated. The rice was the worst rice I have ever had. I am a good cook myself, so I can tell with utmost certainty that their rice was at least 3 days old, and most likely 4-5 days old out of freezer, the texture of that rice had turned to almost like plastic texture. I had stomach pain for the rest of the day from consuming such a low quality food. Even if kept in the fridge, cooked rice grows dangerous bacteria/mold after 24 hours, and shame on me because I knew that, but at the time because I was so hungry and because the owner appeared as a friendly guy I didn 't want to refuse or criticize his food, so I did my best and ate like 60% of it. I also ordered their eggplant dish, to which I give 2 out of 5. At the end they kept asking me how was everything good, and at first I said nothing, but when they kept excessively asking that question by different people, (most likely to guilt trap you to leave a good tip), I overcame my unnecessary reservation and told him well, your rice was not fresh . At that time the owner switched from acting overly friendly to a not very nice attitude and said something like this, you should have said something earlier, not now, and it looks like you actually enjoyed your food because you ate it all , whereas the truth is despite being raised in a family that one should finish his food (which I often do), I had left half of my rice. At that point I felt like not only he is not capable of taking responsibility for bad food, but he is accusing me of lying, so I told him are you sure, my plate must still be there, do you want to check it again to see I didn 't finish it? Bottom line, I think it was the fault of me and my nature to always be appreciative of any food that anyone put in front of me. I learned a valuable lesson that the next time anyone puts any horrible food like this in front of me, respect myself and just refuse it and leave the restaurant right away, because you can 't trust them with anything else either. When I shared this experience with few locals, they all confirmed that this restaurant is well known/notorious for bad food. What a shame to have places like this, especially because I love middle eastern food. A bad middle eastern restaurant in a town is a barrier for entry for a good one, because a potential good restaurateur looks at the low demand of the bad one and mistakenly concludes that there is no demand for his entry, which makes existence of such places a double shame !

The place is amazing! Food is very delicious and authentic! Staff is very nice and friendly! I will come here again and again!

I ordered 2 servings of tabooleh. Worst I have ever had. The minute I opened the dish I could smell the old extra virgin olive and it tasted worse than it smelled. Contacted the restaurant and they more or less told me I didn't know good from bad oil. I told him I get my extra virgin olive oil from a friend who's grandfather manufactures and sells directly from Greece. Was a waste of $20.... don't go there if you want fresh tasty food

Compare other arabic restaurants' quantities or rice was very less and the rice was having no taste. Customers service was poor