Garden Oaks and Oak Forest continue to be some of Houston's most up-and-coming dining neighborhoods. Over the past couple of years, openings like Gatlin's BBQ, Les Ba'get, and Aladdin have given the area exciting new options.
This week, the neighborhood welcomed a new addition for affordable meals and late night eats. The Halal Guys opened its fifth Houston-area restaurant at 3008 Ella Blvd.
Local franchisee Masroor Fatany applied the lessons learned from his locations in Upper Kirby, West Houston, and the Medical Center to his new outpost. For example, it features a separate register for delivery drivers to make sure they aren't clogging the line for dine-in and to-go customers. All traces of the space's former life as a pawn shop have been replaced with lots of windows and the Halal Guys' signature red and yellow accents; a former storage area behind the restaurant has been converted into a covered patio.
The menu will be familiar to anyone who has eaten at Halal Guys. Essentially, diners have a choice of gyro, chicken, or felafel served over rice or in wraps. For the next eight weeks, all of Fatany's locations are featuring a new burrito with a sun-dried tomato tortilla. It also comes with a new cheese sauce that's made with the restaurant's signature white sauce; that could stick around if it proves to be sufficiently popular.
The restaurant will celebrate its grand opening on Saturday, December 21. The first 25 diners will receive free Halal Guys for a year (one rice platter per month for 12 months). Prizes will also be given to the first 50 customers, and one person will win an iPad.
Fatany acknowledges that he's already looking for location number five, but he hasn't signed on anything yet. It won't be long. Houstonians have demonstrated a seemingly limitless appetite for all things Halal Guys.
Halal Guys is now open in Garden Oaks.
