Baghdad Kabab

Baghdad Kabad is closed.  And I'm feeling very guilty, because it may have been in part because I postponed my positive review of them for about four years.

I kid, but Baghdad Kabab does have a history of closing and reopening, so I'm posting this for posterity for its comeback.  

So I know why their have so many bad reviews. Their rice is awful - dried out and chewy.  Their kababs are inconsistent, though sometimes quite good.  Their shawarma is dry and sorta powdery, which they try to cover up with too much sauce.  The staff seem oddly confused by the most simple of things, like ordering two of something.  

But here's what they did well: salads.  That's right.  Not only did they have amazing salads, but they were open until 4am.  And tell me - where the hell can you get the perfect salad in the middle of the night in this city?

Nowhere, except for Baghdad Kabab.  Now, it seems odd that a greasy spoon with $6-$8 entrees has $12 salads, and it seemed like a red flag, but I took a risk, and it was well worth it.  And I've tried their side salads, too, and it is quite clear that whoever makes their salads takes a lot of pride in vegetable prep.

You know how you chop up curly parsley to make tabouli, taking out most of the larger stems?  Well, Baghdad Kabad takes out *every* stem, even the tiny ones attached to the medium ones attached the the large ones.  The entire salad is made up only the little tiny leaves attached to the end of the parsley.

Who the hell has time for that much detail?  I've seen parsley stems in the fanciest restaurants in this city.  I imagine it was because their salad prep dude was standing around with nothing to do because they had no customers.  He also must have had tiny, brown, magical fingers.

Anyway, if they do come back, which they have many times before, go there, order a salad with or without kababs, and maybe a lentil soup with a heavy dusting of sumac.  Don't try anything else.

Everything about our experience last night means we'll be skipping this place in the future.
We placed our order at 8:15 (through Seamless.com- so some of the blame could be laid at their feet too I guess).
We were given a delivery estimate of 45-60mins.
At 1hr 10 we get a call from the restaurant confirming the address.
At 1hr 30 we get another call (this time from the driver) also calling to confirm the address- apparently he got lost?!
Eventually at 1hr 45 our food arrives and the driver expects to be paid- we had already paid online through Seamless.
We get our by now less than piping hot food upstairs and open it up to discover items missing and items we didn't order.
We called both the restaurant and Seamless to sort out what went wrong. Apparently the restaurant 'ran out of cheeseburgers'. So they just didn't fulfill that part of the order.
Seriously. Why did we not get a call notifying us of this so we could order something else?! Perhaps when they called us to confirm the address they could have slipped that in as a 'oh by the way...'?! Some things were listed on the receipt but missing from the delivery, somethings were listed on the receipt but without a price next to them.
By the time we sorted things out it was almost 2hrs since we had placed our order.
and the food was luke warm at best.

Sometimes you get awesome service and mediocre food and figure maybe it was an off night in the kitchen or something, sometimes you get  crappy service but awesome food and you figure maybe the waiter/delivery guy is having a rough night. But when you get crappy service and mediocre food I think it's safe to say we'll give it a miss in the future.

Best baba in the city. The falafel is a spiritual experience.  Great people, great food.  Also, I wish I could give them a sixth star for being open late, and feeding us "industry" people delicious food after close.  Did I mention the baba?  I'm nomming the arse out of it next day, and it destroys Sultan's, Mizrahi, Pita Inn, and all the other Mecca foodie joints. Hands down, some of the best food in the city after 2 am, and a viable contender at 5 pm.

The name has changed several times, but this continues to be one of my favorite places to eat in Chicago.  This is one of those places where I take arrogant NYC foodies to show them how Chi rolls.  Delicious, cheap, open late, and did I mention the baba?