Family Dinner & the $200 Friday Night Fiasco

Our family’s schedule has been so sporadic this summer with both Tayair and Malik working different shifts and me conducting workshops in the evening that we haven’t spent a lot of time together.

Tayair works part time at Home Depot in Middletown with a schedule that changes weekly and Malik works the overnight shift at Amazon, Sunday through Thursday.

However, it’s very important for us to spend some time together before Malik returns to Bowie State University next month. We finally found a date that worked for all us so we headed into Newark, onto the campus of the University of Delaware to have dinner at Ali Baba which is our favorite Middle Eastern cuisine restaurant.

The atmosphere and wait staff are great and the food is amazingly good! Malik and I ordered individual appetizers, he chose the Sambosa, which is a mixture of potatoes, peas, carrots, curry spice, stuffed in dough and is deep-fried.

I ordered the Stuffed Grape Leaves which are stuffed with rice, onion, tomato, parsley, and spices and I also ordered a glass of Sangria.

Hubby and Tayair both ordered the Samke Harra which is a flaky fresh salmon fillet, baked with tahini, garlic, cumin, onion, pine nuts, lemon juice, and parsley, served with a side of Middle Eastern rice.

Unfortunately, hubby’s salmon wasn’t cooked thoroughly so he had to send it back to the kitchen and they placed it in a take home container. Malik ordered the Shrimp Kabobs, which were grilled shrimp with vegetables, served on a bed of Middle Eastern rice.

I ordered the special, which was the spicy lamb dish and it was awesome. I can’t remember the actual name of it but the waiter called it a “Happy Meal” and yes, it did make me happy!

Needless to say, we had a great family dinner and it would have been a perfect night except upon returning to the parking lot we saw a tow truck removing a car and then realized ours wasn’t there either!

Yes, we had been towed too! We had parked down the street in a very empty Burger King parking lot, far away from the entry. However, I assume the racket that they are running is to call Ewing Towing every 20 minutes to remove cars that had been there longer, oh and by the way, there just happen to be Lyft driver sitting in the lot – can you say, SCAM!!!!

Our $100 dinner turned into $200.00 because the towing fee was $95.00 plus a $1.95 transaction fee for using a credit card…as if people walk around with an extra $100 cash in their pockets. What really pissed me off was the fact that it’s summer and there are no classes in session on campus and there were only 4 cars parked at Burger King.

The Town of Newark will never have to worry about us spending our money there ever again because we will not be returning even if the food at Ali Baba is amazing!!!! And to top it off, the leftover salmon that my hubby had packaged was forgotten and he left in the Lyft driver’s car!