Restaurant: Aladdin Location: 5420 Clairemont Mesa Blvd. San Diego, CA Phone: (858) 573-0000 Price Range: $4.99-$18.95

Number of visits: many
Last visit before review: February 16, 2002

Randy has had: Aladdin's pizza, chicken salad with pita, chicken shawerma, lamb shawerma, hommos, hot mint tea, iced tea.

Jeff has had: Jafar's pizza, chopped chicken salad, chicken salad with pita, hommos, hot mint tea, iced tea.

Rating 8 (of 12) Good

Randy says: Aladdin's pizza has lots of herbs and roma tomatoes, feta cheese, and mozarella. The herbs, tomatoes, and cheese blend nicely together. The tomatoes are juicy when you bite into them, and all the herbs give a nice flavor.

Jeff says: I used to love to get Jafar's pizza, which is much like Aladdin's pizza but with lamb and peppers as well as the herbs, tomatoes, and cheese. The lamb was usually pretty good, but sometimes there was lots of gristle and when that was the case it ruined the pizza. Even when the lamb was good, it was spiced in a way that made me crazy thirsty later. Other times I would get the chopped chicken salad which is iceberg lettuce and cucumbers chopped up and mixed with seasoned chicken and most notably sun dried tomatoes. It's a lot of good flavors together. Although it's a huge salad, I liked it so much I would finish the whole thing in one sitting.

Randy says: Because the chopped chicken salad is all iceberg lettuce, I go for the chicken salad with pita. It has romaine lettuce, herbs, pistachios, and grilled chicken. The flavor is very good but sometimes the chicken has a lot of gristly unedible bits. The shawermas are good, and the meats in them tend to not be as dried out as when they're on the pizzas.

Jeff says: I like the chicken salad with pita, too. Its dressing is very light and flavorful, not overwhelming. Since we both like this one and it's huge, we often share one. The hommos is very good and rivals other places we like for top honors. The hot peppermint tea is good, as is the iced tea.

Randy says: The hommos is good but it's missing something like tahini, and there was a lot of oil on it. I like the hot tea and the iced tea also.

Aladdin has good food (other than the chopped meats as noted above) but it loses some points in other areas. The floor is stone and there are no soft surfaces, so it gets very noisy with only a few people. When it's crowded the clamor is unbearable. The doors are often left open, mostly because otherwise smoke from the cooking fills the room (and on a few occasions we were nearly overwhelmed by the smoke). On warm days with the doors open, flies come in and buzz around and land on the table which is very unappetizing. Also with the doors open, smoke from the outside tables flows freely in. The environment is so unappealing we limited our visits to cool weather (no flies) and off hours (less noise), and eventually stopped going altogether. But after a long absence we went back and found we still enjoyed the food.