Peter Schilling

Review of Tabbuli Grill

Beware travelers. My wife and I were visiting Char...

Beware travelers. My wife and I were visiting Charleston from out of town and came upon Tabbuli. Our first impression was that the service was bizarre: there were a ton of wait staff, seven or eight, standing around, talking loudly. There was loud country music blaring from some radio station. The owner or manager was pacing around with a cell phone stuck to his ear.
But the food is what counts and it was close to awful. We ordered falafel, the masabacha, and the fatoush salad. The last was overdressed, and yet, incredibly, had virtually no flavor, but it did include small pieces of pita that were hard as gravel. The chef's fear of salt continued with the masabacha, which is hummous with chick peas, pine nuts and warm pita--flavorless. The pita was cold and spongy, there were no pine nuts, and the chick peas were overcooked as baby food. I've eaten hummous in Detroit, NYC, Minneapolis, and Saudi Arabia, and have never eaten one this bad. Clearly they used canned chick peas, very little tahini, and no lemon juice or salt. Again, baby food. The falafel were OK, but I think it was a boxed powder.
This is a place that looks as if the owner wants to appear on the cutting edge, has sank a ton of money into the surroundings, but doesn't care about the most important part of a restaurant--the food. We wasted one night of a vacation here--don't make our mistake.