Critic's Review
Things are really slow in Fort Lauderdale; I'd tried the Gyros in this place in their Davie location and it didn't measure up.
The parking lot is a disaster at lunchtime, even at 2:20 it was pretty bad. It's worse when the Amazon delivery guy parks right near the exit. This blocked 2 way traffic for over 10 minutes; deliveries should be made in the back where the lot is more spacious.
On the second day open, the crowd was pretty sparse. In this neck of the woods, your business is 12-2p, and that's about it.
Make no mistake about it; this is fast food. From the bright orange rice to the bins of "gyro" meat and chicken; they spoon it out into aluminum plates in assembly line fashion. I wouldn't be surprised if the gyro spit was just for show.
I didn't want the orange rice, so I went for a falafel. Apparently the falafels aren's pre-made, because I had to wait for them to deep fry one. There's no beeper or numbers or table delivery here; you have to wait for the falafel before you can pay. The chaos worked out; I asked for hummus, with is a $1 upcharge, and they didn't charge me for it.
I had some things to do on the way him, so I tasted it while it was hot in the car. They didn't give me any napkins in the take-out bag, so I had to go back into the store to get some.
I took a couple of bites; Pretty bland and boring. When I got him it was still luke warm.
They don't grill the pita; the lettuce and tomato are pure fast food. The Falafel itself is completely devoid of flavor.
Looking for some middle eastern spice? This isn't it. The vegetarian experience. Tasteless fuel. These falafels are the worst excuse for food I've experienced in a while.
The big thing at Halal Guys is the white sauce, which comes in big refrigerated packets.
The sauce has the consistency of creamy Italian dressing.
It adds a bit of taste, although not much. A peak at the ingredients told me I didn't want to eat very much of this:
It's basically a packaged salad dressing; would you rather have this or a fresh Tzatziki, which is yogurt, cucumber, garlic and salt?
Conclusion
Halal Guys is a franchise operation that attempts to mass produce a successful street food vendor business in New York City. Usually such operations require dumbing down recipes and simplifying the process so that minimum wage workers can make the food. I used to work in NYC, and while I never had anything from Halal Guys; even the stuff we called "rat on a stick" was better than this. Street food has taste. Spices are used to create flavor. This stuff is tasteless fast food.
They've also raised the prices to a point where it's no longer a value offering. A falafel sandwich with hummus is $8.99; for 3 falafel and smear of hummus on a dry pita? A loaded lamb Gyro isn't worth $9 on it's own.
You can try the candy corn colored rice yourself.