Reem's California Mission

The tahini chocolate chip cookies with halawa (Arabic for halva) are the best I’ve had. Definitely add them to your order!

The only great thing here is the falafels! The rest of the menu is okaay.If you come here an hour before they close, they probably won’t have any falafels!

I really had high hopes for this place based on the james beard foundation. I think this was a case of great marketing, hype, and great IG pics that really didn't remotely translate into a good dining experience. There were several glaring problems from start to end.1. This is kind of out of their control, but this area isn't safe at all. Several junkies were outside of the restaurant, and a couple of them entered while we were dining. Also on the adjacent streets there were multiple spots on the road with broken glass where it appeared that car windows were smashed.2. The service is mediocre at best. The waitress seemed annoyed in a bad mood the entire meal. I understand everyone has off days, but with the mandatory 20% auto gratuity that they charge it really leaves a bad taste.3. They need to be more up front about the 20% auto gratuity. I understand they want a living wage, if that's the goal then just raise your prices 20% instead of sneakily adding in a 20% mandatory gratuity despite poor service. Also if you're gonna charge a 20% gratuity, maybe put some of that towards hiring a security guard for the door to keep the junkies out.4. All of the above can be overlooked if the food is great. In this case, it was not. We came for brunch and one dish we ordered was the Sujuk, which is potatoes and crumbled sausage. On the menu it was labeled as a portion enough for 2 people, with tax and the mandatory gratuity this one dish was $30, what we got was a bowl of greasy potatoes with no flavor, maybe one tablespoon of burned sausage crumbles that were so small they looked like course ground black pepper, topped with 1 egg. This dish was a total disappointment, it's literally called sausage in English and there was no sausage in it either in flavor or texture because the pieces were too small to even feel when you take a bite. The PaliCali was good, the other items we ordered were mediocre.In the end we left disappointed, slightly mad that we had wasted $140+ on a range of mediocre food and were still hungry. We ended up going to Beit Rima shortly after, where we spent less, had significantly better food (everything was between very good to excellent, 1 dish literally had as much protein on it as all the dishes put together that we got here) in terms of taste, quality, portion size, Better service.I think this place would be ok to think of a spot to get a light snack, and not a full meal. I think a person wouldn't be as disappointed if they went with that expectation, but then they'd still be paying full meal prices for snacks and side dishes.What they did good1. Presentation of the food is overall good, they really do a pretty good job of making pretty food.2. Interior decor is really nice3. Bathroom is very cleanWe usually try to give a restaurant a 2nd try if it seems like they have 1 or 2 issues, but this place had so many issues from start to finish that it unfortunately seems like it's endemic.I may update this in the future, if we give another visit.Parking: It's pretty much metered street parking only in this area, and there arent many spots. It's not a safe area to park, there are a ton junkies around.

Food was good and our server gave good recommendations. However, portions were small and service wasn 't great: they did not bring enough glasses, plates, or silverware for our party and basically didn 't stop by besides to take our order or to drop off food.We had to grab things from other tables so we could start eating. On top of poor service, they charge a 20% Employee Resilience Fee at time of ordering instead of tipping at the end of the meal which made us only more frustrated by the lack of service that we paid for upfront. It was not very busy and our server was sitting at a table on their phone for most of the time we were there.We shared plates tapas style and would 've continued to order food, but as soon as we put our forks down, they took all of our dishes and silverware without asking if we were done which was pretty awkward.

Be advised that you have to pay an extra 21% on takeout here and they won 't tell you that before the credit card processing system asks you to tip on the bill! Absurd. 20% Worker Resilience Charge and a 1% Zero Food Print charge. What even is that? Takeout should not be upcharged over 20% and especially without making it obvious up front BEFORE asking for a tip on top of that!