Ishtar Gate

This place is gross. I took a few bites of my food and threw it away. The owner is nice but this food is poor quality and disgusting.

I find the food to be very good. I am not a picky eater, so maybe my taste pallet is not as great as the others on here. The portions are big, flavor seems good to me. Their meat is sliced as compared to chunks at other carts around town, so I guess it depends on preference. I would eat it more like a taco than with a fork (Gyros). I have been going here about once to twice a week for the last two months, as I work at The Benson Hotel around the corner. Normally I go before work and order (9pm), but I woke up late today, and found this app to call them. Phone number works, and they had my food ready for me when I arrived. For a meal between $ 5-​$ 7, it is way better than any fast food location you are going to go to.

I couldn’t eat the salad. It was very old… and I found a hair in the rice.
I got the Falafel over rice and my husband the mix kebab over rice. We agreed that the food wasn’t very good.
I feel sorry for the owner that was nice and friendly with us but we are not coming back.

All I could taste of the hummus, baba ghanoush, and tzatziki was that tingling preservative sensation exploding in my mouth. Not ok…
Chicken shawarma is just refried honey-​BBQ buffalo wing meat covered with ranch dressing. So strange…
Dolma filled with al dente rice.
Good falafel though?

Avoid this place…
I am hands down in love with Greek food and I stumbled upon this place walking around. The pictures on the menu look amazing but what kind of turned me off is you can see how much they have raised the prices because they are to cheap to update the menu boards.
I ordered the lamb gyro and a side of humus, I was the only person in line and it took forever for my food to come out. I first got the lamb gyro, it was the most pathetic gyro I have ever seen. Maybe 4 strips of tasteless lamb that was dry with salad mix, yes I said said mix like you buy from a grocery store with purple cabbage, carrots non the less it was brown like it had been there for awhile. The tzatziki sauce smelled like ranch dressing with chopped up cucumbers in it. Nothing was warm and it was $ 6.99
The $ 7.00 humus was disgusting, no flavor or seasoning and it had so much tahini in it that is was overwhelming, it was served with this sad pita bread half that was clearly heated up in a microwave.
I was literally embarrassed for them that they would serve such trash. Will definitely not go back.

Really nice vendor and the baklava is good but the rest of the food varies from bland to awful. Got a gyro and after one bite I was done, threw it out and went to another vendor.

I am stuck at home with a broken, immobilized leg. My mom is visiting from the Midwest, and this type of food is completely foreign to her. I wanted falafel, and sent her to the Ishtar Gate off oh Hawthorne (Not Alder!). She was absolutely taken advantage of! I wanted a falafel plate, which should have cost around $ 8. She didn’t remember the name of it, but explained the food items I was asking for. They sold her a falafel and rice plate (which should cost $ 7.99) and a side of hummus and a side of baba ganoush, The salad on the falafel and rice plate was rotten — the iceberg lettuce was all midway between being pink or in a state of slimy decay. The falafel here are very small and dry and overcooked. She was charged $ 22 for this! The food here is not good, but I asked my mom to go there because it is close to my house. Never again — the convenience is not worth it, and taking advantage of my mom’s wallet and ignorance to Mediterranean food is unforgivable!

It wasn’t the biggest lamb gyro I’ve ever seen, or the most stuffed full of delicious meats and savory sauces, or by any means the «best» lamb gyro in general … but it only set me back five bucks and it helped me to not be terribly hungover the next morning. Thank you, Ishtar Gate, for being open kinda late on a Monday night so I could eat stuff while getting drunk downtown.

I really wanted to like this place, and all signs indicated I would (read: most places were closed and I was really, really hungry), except… it just didn’t happen. My lamb shawarma took forever despite me being the only person in line, and when I finally received my food it was just so disappointingly bland. Despite the heaping amounts of lamb, yogurt sauce, and spices, I couldn’t really distinguish any of the flavors. It was very puzzling because the shawarma was so massive and visually beautiful.
The man who handed me my food was so jolly and nice though. And regardless of the food I am a huge fan of the name Ishtar Gate.

I had the gyro lamb I ordered extra meat on mine and I had very thin slice of meat it’s full of salad to the point where you can’t even taste the flavor is so plane and nothing what a real gyro should be :(going to take my business else where next time

Wouldn’t recommend this cart based on my recent experience. What looked on presentation like a nice hearty helping of falafel in a lavash turned out to have all the actual falafel piled right on top, and nothing but lettuce inside. The sauces and veggies were much blander than other nearby carts’ (the «hot» sauce wasn’t) and the thing was basically a big portion of bread and lettuce with a small garnish of falafel. And then my credit card somehow got charged 50¢ more for the meal than the price the menu claimed. Although the guy in the cart seemed friendly and the food wasn’t bad, this is too much nickel-​and-​diming for me to want to return ever again (I’ll stick with Mawj around the corner) — but if you do try this cart, I’d suggest you keep your receipt!

Quiet this evening all around the carts. This is one of the ones that’s open for dinner time — I got a lamb gyro to test the basics.
Meets expectations. I’m not going to tell my out of town sibling that they need to go here. Neither will I stop him from going here on a walk home after the bars. Nothing spectacular, nothing disappointing. Relatively fast service.