Shandiz Mediterranean Grill & Market

(Full disclosure — I wrote an extended version of this review for Plano Profile magazine. I’ve shortened it here to the main points.)
I went to Shandiz for its daily lunch buffet. Offered seven days a week, there’s nothing like a buffet to try a variety of food items as well as have a satisfying lunch within a reasonable timeframe. The buffet begins at 11:30 a.m. on weekdays.
The Shandiz market was a big surprise. It’s absolutely huge – row after row of shelves, stacked floor to ceiling with teas, rice, herbs and spices, dry and canned foods, jams and much more. The back of the store is lined with freezer cases full of products I’d never seen before.
The restaurant offers a very comfortable atmosphere and a large buffet. The wide variety of items includes appetizers (don’t miss the creamy hummus!), soups, salads, kabobs, rice dishes, stews and desserts. There were many new-​to-​us items and we found the wait staff to be extremely helpful in explaining what was in each particular dish.
Here are the things that stood out to me:
Dolmas: Perfectly prepared — not too salty, not too oily and filled with the most amazing creamy interior.
Salad Olivieh: This was hands-​down one of my favorite salad dishes on the buffet because it was so unique. It was quite similar to a potato salad in texture, but it’s totally different. The creamy dish features potatoes, eggs, shredded chicken, green olives and a host of other things that we couldn’t identify but inhaled all the same.
Khoresht Bademjan: Khoresht is Persian for «stew.» This delicious eggplant stew features beef, tomatoes, cinnamon and turmeric, to name but a few of the spices.
Khoresht Ghormeh Sabzi: The fresh herb and lamb stew can be made with a variety of greens, from fresh herbs to spinach to leeks. The version Shandiz offers has spinach, lamb, red beans and lemon. It was delicious.
Fried fish: It’s hard to prepare perfectly fried fish. It’s even harder to do it as part of a buffet. Shandiz has mastered it. Our fish was crisp on the outside, tender on the inside and each bite was punctuated with the bright note of freshly squeezed lemon juice on top.
Kabob Kubideh: Who knew ground meat, grated onion, salt and pepper could taste so amazing?
Chicken Kabob: Unlike any chicken kabob you may have had before, Shandiz marinates its kabobs in a unique spice blend including saffron and orange zest. The result is golden-​colored pieces of chicken that are tender and flavorful, but not overly spicy.

The beef kabobs are fantastic. As if one is not enough they bring a plate of two kabobs and a fluffy mound of jasmine rice! Being a BYOB restaurant you can drink plenty of liquid courage to tackle items never seen from the attached grocery store. Great place, would recommend to anyone and will visit again.

I’ve tried it twice and wasn’t wowed either time. The fare offered isn’t really diverse enough and the food is ok, but just ok. The beef kabobs were tasty but not tender enough. The chicken was yummy but a bit dry. The kubideh kabobs were my favorite meat (perfectly seasoend) but they weren’t kept warm enough. The salads were ok, as we’re rhe grilled veggies. I could only really recommend this place to a vegetarian.

Ordered a takeout of the lamb, beef and chicken sandwiches. the quantity is good but the taste was very average. They don’t serve shawarma meats anymore so the sandwich really only has cubes of meat and few veggies. I expected something like a sauce too in the sandwich. This is a plain sandwich; some people like it that way but not for everyone.

Very authentic Persian food, good ingredients, nice customer service and it is BYOB. My family and I go there at least once per month and the experience is always nice.
This place is a great choice for large parties. Just go early to get the tables and seats you need as they don’t accept reservations. You also need to make sure your guests appreciate authentic flavors and real ethnic food. Believe me, this is not a place for customers expecting Persian fusion, Mediterranean tacos, chicken nugget skewers or MSG enhancements.

My friend and I eat at Shandiz every Wednesday night. We share the lamb kabob, plenty of food for two.
But the noon buffet, every day of the week, is to die for. Today I had super-​tender salmon (the chef serves two HUGE salmon on the weekends), lamb chops, baked fried chicken with!! Indian! spices, a chicken olive salad that is divine, eggplant dip, cole slaw and wonderful cookies. And I only sampled about ¼ of the items on offer.
I have taken all sorts of people to the Shandiz buffet and every single one of them has found food that they loved: black/​white; old/​young; athlete/​sedentary; meat lovers/​vegetarians. Even fast food lovers swear they are coming back again.
Plus you can hear in there.
Or call ahead for takeout.

Kebabs were ok there was no flavor I was kind of disappointed .I liked the salad but food was too ordinary for me! Two stars for ambience & lunch buffet combined !

I agree no flavor what so ever. I poked in & the presentation was nice. Literally no taste. No creamer for coffee. I know this is short but there nothing left to say.
I gave two stars because the interior is inviting. The food is just terribly bland… don’t bother. Oodles & Noodles have more flavor… bleh.

The food is consistently great, and the server we usually get is great! The only down side is that the food takes awhile to come out, but it’s a great for friends catching up!

Terrible service
Terrible food
Terrible ambiance such a waste
Do not go there
They don’t have half of the menu
The lamb was hard as a rock
We asked to talk to the manager and the waitress said he was smoking and he never came
Lame lame place

Terrible food. Kabab is never cooked. Rice is ok. Service is bad. Stews just don’t taste right. I keep trying this place once a year hoping it would change but no such luck. It’s bad.

After waiting 25 minutes for a falafel sandwich and no one else in the restaurant at all The sandwich comes out with stale bread The falafel burnt to a crisp overloaded with lettuce and minimal veggies. When asked how my sandwich was I showed the waitress the burnt falafel and she replied sorry and turned walking away no excuses no apologies. Worst experience I’ve had in 25 years of eating Mediterranean food

Combination platter was okay, kabobs were dry. Lentil stew was not edible.
Told the waitress that the lemon taste was overbearing. she apologized, but still charged me for the dish.

I don’t know where some of these people are eating. I’ve eaten here half a dozen times and had a delicious. pleasant experience every time.
It’s a lunch buffet and I’m usually there fairly early. I always feel welcome, the food selection and preparation is better than I have seen at most buffets.

I have been meaning to try this place out for a long time now since I pass by it all the time. I went here this weekend on Saturday evening to order some takeout food. The restaurant only had one other paying guest, but I looked past that as soon as I saw the food on their plates and it looked really good.
The hostess escorted me to the bar area to let me review their menu. I ordered Chicken Kabobs and Lam Kabobs and a Mediterranean Salad to go. I paid close to $ 40 for these 3 items. While I was waiting the waitress even offered by kid free cookies. The restaurant is connected inside to their grocery store which is full of pastries, cakes, and grocery items.
When the food was ready, I took it home immediately. The food looked great in terms of presentation. But the taste was simply horrible. The chicken was ok but not very well flavored. The lamb was inedible as it was overcooked and it really pained me to trash it. The rice was hard to eat as it had a strange smell in it. By the time I was done, I did not have the appetite left to taste the salad.
So I just felt horrible after this experience that I dropped $ 40 for a terrible experience. I would not recommend the restaurant for food. However, the service is great and perhaps their grocery store is ok as well, but I did not purchase anything there!

I go to Shandiz every once in a while. It is a decent place, but the service is not that good. The buffet is okay and as others mentioned, it is a bit of a hit and miss. I did the buffet many times, but I also tried the Soltani dish which was sometimes just right and other times a bit cold.
Overall, I would recommend it for someone who wants to try Persian food but would advise them to lower their expectations a bit on service and food quality.

Read some good reviews on another website and decided to try it. If I had read these reviews here, I would not have gone. Went for dinner on a Saturday night at 6. We were the only diners. The onions herbs and bread presentation prior to dinner was very bland. We did NOT get any feta cheese like someone in another review mentioned.
I ordered «lamb tenderloin» kebobs. They were obviously NOT tenderloin, because they were tough, gristly and overcooked. The rice was just tasteless. My husband ordered the lamb shank, which at least was tender and the broth it came in was flavorful.
While waiting for our orders we were subjected to listening to cackling laughter and pot banging from the kitchen and three waitresses talking to a fourth on a telephone just a couple tables away. Very annoying.
Will NEVER go back.

Mediocre food, undercooked kabobs and rude staff.
There are several options for Persian food in the area. I suggest choosing anywhere else. The food is a buffet, but apparently the drinks are not. My daughter and I got scolded for filling our own glasses at the soda fountain. The food quality was equal to leftovers, and the beef kabobs were undercooked, which, considering it’s a staple dish, it’s hard to believe they failed.
Curt and indifferent wait staff, they make you feel unwelcome. If you want good Persian food, have your mother in law make you a meal. Otherwise, go to Dean’s or Fadi’s and leave Shandiz in its faded, architecturally chaotic glory.

This review is based on the buffet only. I have only been here three times during lunch and never for dinner.
This place is a bit of a hit and miss. Sometimes the food is great, and at times not so much. They have a lot of variety in their buffet. They serve things like lamb shank, lamb chops, whole salmon, different types of kebabs, different kinds of hummus, different types of rice and salads. The desserts are pretty good too. So as far as variety is concerned, they get a 5 star. When it comes to flavors though, at times it can be pretty bland, and I don’t really do well with spicy food. So, if it’s bland for me, it is pretty bland for most people.
The price is pretty reasonable too, and the people who work here are also very friendly.

As you enter this bronze-​entablatured, Persian theme park of a restaurant, you are immediately body-​slammed by images of Zarathustra and goddesses hugging tigers, or something. Aromas of mint and lamb further slap you across the face as you settle in for a meal fit for the Shah. Or is it?
The waitress who seated us was rather curt and, quite frankly, made us feel a trifle unwelcome. I really wanted a doner kebap, which is why I came in the first place, but alas, no doner and no schwarma. Sad.
I settled for a lamb wrap. The meat was tough, kind of like chewing on an old lady’s arm. Too much mint– and let me say, the mint was dry. There are farms on Tatooine with more moisture. The garlic yogurt sauce that accompanied the wrap was a delightful and, frankly, meal saving move on Shandiz’s part.
The babaganouj was fluffy and made everything better. Then I had some of that wonderful Iranian tea and that further calmed the seas.
All in all, meh. I have mint in my garden and I’d love to slaughter a cute baby lamb. Next time I’m eating in.