G Wiv wrote:Had a combo a couple of weeks ago, fine, ok, glad I gave Halal Guys a try. Worked better as mishmash as opposed to individual components.

Halalguys1.jpg

How late are they open? 'cause that right there looks like just the thing for circa 3 a m in that location.

And hey - it's "healthy"!

Roger Ramjet wrote:How late are they open? 'cause that right there looks like just the thing for circa 3 a m in that location.

Surprisingly 11pm daily and 3am Fri/Sat, much later than I thought Halal Guys in Skokie would be open.

Funny you should mention 3am, I don't drink much these days but when I posted earlier I was reminded of long ago late nights in a land far away topping commodity grade griddled burgers with hash browns, fried and raw onions, chili, eggs, ketchup and......wait for it......pancake syrup, not to mention about 2-oz of hot sauce. Maybe that's why the Slinger never seemed all that overboard to me.

Halal Guys Skokie.

Habibi wrote:You know what good junk drunk food in NYC is? It's not Halal Cart, sorry, as much as I do like the idea of supporting my Arab brothers in their selling of crap to New Yorkers. Good junk drunk food is the bodega Philly Steak or Chicken sandwich. Chopped meat fried hard on a grill on a toasted hero with cheese of your choice, shredded lettuce, grilled onion, and a little mayo and hot sauce.

I don't know if this is what you're talking about, but it sounds like it, and I'm intrigued: I came across this short, 20-min documentary of the New York chopped cheese sandwich about a month ago. I found it a pretty fascinating piece about a very regional food. Note: lots of NSFW language.

Halal Guys Closes Chicago Restaurants Due to Legal Dispute. But the suburban Skokie location remains open

https://chicago.eater.com/2019/7/29/207 ... al-dispute

Halal Guys Plans to Reopen Chicago Restaurants in Gold Coast and Loop

https://chicago.eater.com/2019/11/25/20 ... coast-loop

Dave148 wrote:

Halal Guys Plans to Reopen Chicago Restaurants in Gold Coast and Loop

Is there demand in the Chicago market? It seemed near unanimous here, and elsewhere, that the product isn't very good. I get the expanded sense of viability for fast-casual, but there's enough good Middle Eastern options that this reboot seems destined to fall flat.

Went to Halal Guys in Skokie pre-pandemic, I think it was around dinner time on a weekday. Place was maybe 20% occupied when we got there, by the time we left it was busier, maybe 2/3 full.
We ordered a beef gyro sandwich with fries, a chicken platter and a combo chicken/beef gyro platter. On my combo dish I wanted to try some of their hot sauce, the worker recommended at most 3 'lines' of it so I went with that. I was glad I did, stuff was genuinely very very spicy, I think even chili heads would have been satisfied with the heat if they put 7 or 8 lines on.
Overall, the meal was pretty decent but not great. Their famous white sauce was very good, I appreciated the flavor and moisture it added to the dish. The food itself was a bit dry, especially the pita wedges they give you on the side which were almost crunchy at the edges. They have big vertical rotisseries behind the counter but the ready to serve meat was piled in heaping mounds on the griddle, which they would stir around once in a while to keep it evenly warm. It's a 'fast-casual' type of place where the food is sitting in bins like Chipotle or Panda Express; without a good amount of customers there's not enough turnover to keep it very fresh. Freshest part of the meal besides the vegetables were probably the fries, which were standard frozen crinkle-cut ones that were cooked to order and well-salted.

I haven't been back since but would definitely try it again, especially if they can keep the food a little fresher. Perhaps they were expecting a lot of customers earlier that didn't show up, certainly the gigantic pile of meat they had prepared would be a colossal waste to throw out.

The platters were $10 each, the sandwich $8. The platters especially give you a hefty amount of food for the price, I ate a bit more than half and had the rest for leftovers. And while it's mostly rice and veggies, they weren't skimpy on the meat either, so overall a good value for the money.

That's a place that's pretty good when they're "on" but fairly mediocre and inconsistent the rest of the time. I've had the mediocre and inconsistent version often enough to stop visiting.

Libanais, while different, is a far more consistent performer.