Sami's Family Restaurant

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  Breakfast good, lunch and dinner not great, service absolutely horrible!
  
  I have now been to Sami's a few times, mostly because I didn't want to travel far to eat, and the experience has been mostly disappointing.
  
  As far as the food, I have had the gyros twice, and they prepare the gyros incorrectly. While they are gyros on the spit, you can tell that is it cooked on the spit first, then taken off, sliced perpendicular to the traditional way of cutting a gyro (which makes the slices look, mistakenly, like Grecian Delight), stored and refrigerated and then put on a grill once someone orders it. Granted, because of the lack of business they might not be able to serve it in the traditional way. Still, even if they cut the meat off the spit correctly and then heated it on a flat grill later (which many places do), that would be much better.
  
  Also, I had the fried ravioli as a starter and they were not good at all. Hard, dry and cold.
  
  As far as the service, it is the worst place I have ever been to. When I ask for lemon in my Diet Coke, the girl looked at me in a rude "are you kidding me" type of look. When I told another server that the gyro was prepared incorrectly, she basically disagreed with me. When they brought out the starters, they did not bring any appetizer plates with them. If you were a local, they are fine with you and chat all day about their friends. But if you aren't from here, you will not get the same attention of the other guests. And when I finished my gyro, the server came across with a "it must not have been that bad if you ate is all" remark. The owners seem nice, but the service staff is extremely unprofessional and quite rude. And it isn't just one set of staff. I have been here three times and the wait staff is the same way. As someone who served in restaurants on International Drive in Orlando for years, I can attest that this is among the worst wait staff I have ever seen, period. (also, maybe the longest review I have ever put on a wait staff on Yelp).
  
  I would recommend coming here for breakfast, as it is good, large and priced right. As for lunch or dinner, the taste borderlines on adequate to not so desirable. And for the wait staff, the whole crew should be fired and they should start off with a fresh crew, or have decent service management. Still, good service is hard to find in southern Illinois. I would give them two stars, but the wait staff makes a one-star rating a no-brainer.

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  Posted on 08.06.13 David T.

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