Hello Spiralites! You may find it interesting that this post is in both the Good Places and Bad Places to eat. But Herche and I decided to use the Groupon ($50 for $100) we bought for Imperial Fez and check it out. Well there were some really good things about it and some really bad things about it. I’ll sum it up and then go into more detail:

• The Good = Food and Entertainment
• The Bad=Dessert, Tea
• The Ugly=Service

I guess my mobile phone is probably the best in taking pictures in the dark (obviously). But the environment of the place is pretty cool. Before we were seated we had to take off our shoes. Then we were shown to a table that was about 2 feet off the ground. We sat in these little small chairs which were actually pretty comfortable. The Moroccan decor is pretty fun to look at although I have seen it before at Epcot in Disney World.
If you look closely at this picture, you can see the belly dancer. That starts at 8pm and is quite entertaining - especially when she breaks out the fire. See more pics below.

The Bad

Service: Our server was named Muhammed and he was quite the DB! He was real snarky and really kinda ruined the whole experience for us from the time he brought our towels out and told us that we had to put them over our left shoulder because we were going to have to eat right-handed until after our entree when we waited at least half an hour for our dessert to come out.

Tea: I was hoping to have some delicious Moroccan iced tea for dinner but they brought out the most diluted disgusting tea I have ever tasted.

Dessert: Now I don’t know if we got shafted on dessert because we ended up asking for it in a box because we waited over half an hour for it but I could have gone to the produce section at Kroger for a better dessert. It was some bad watermelon, cantaloupe a chocolate covered pastry called a briouat. Quite frankly I would have preferred a fortune cookie.

Time: The time we had to wait between the entree and dessert was unbelievable. It was at least half an hour. I told our DB server that we were ready for it about 10 minutes after our entree. He came out at least another three times to attend to other tables before I told him to just box it up at which point it started to get an attitude.

The Good

Alright, lets talk about the best part - food. The food was actually quite good.

Before anything happened, we washed our hands at the table using a large bowl and a “genie lamp”. (Alnitylat adayim for all my MOTS).

No utensils by the way. Everything is eaten using your hands but don’t worry, your server will bring you a large towel to put over your shoulder which actually comes in handy throughout the night. The first picture is the bread that is served with the lentil soup that is called harira. The soup was also made with beans, tomatoes, onions and the perfect blend of spices that gave off an amazing aroma and even better taste.

The next picture was the salad. This was probably my favorite course. In Morrocco it is called a sh’ladda. It is a platter of smaller salads all on one plate: tomato, peppers, cucumbers, lemon, vinegar, carrots, olives, and other deliciousness. The spicy sauce called harissa that they serve with it is REALLY hot but also REALLY good.

The next course might as well been the dessert but in Morocco, it is a traditional appetizer. A personal pan size pastry filled with cinnamon, almonds, sugar and topped with powdered sugar and what looked like to be caramel sauce. I wish they would have saved this for dessert instead of the other crap they served us…anyway.

The first three items are part of a prefixed menu. You get to choose your entree. I chose the Chicken Kabobs and Herche chose the Lamb Shank. Both were well presented and tasted really good. You can see the picture of the kabobs above.

The food was good for the most part but the service ruined it all and I felt like $45/person just was not worth it. If you want a good Middle-Eastern restaurant with belly dancing, check out Persepolis on Roswell Road in Sandy Springs. It has been a while since I have eaten there but it was all good. I will go back soon so I can do a review for all of you Spiralites!

Imperial Fez bottom line: Been there, done that, don’t need to do it again! (but the belly dancing was cool, especially with the fire!)

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