Pita Inn Market & Bakery

This is my favorite fast food restaurant. My whole family feels like we are having a treat when I pick up dinner from here.
Thanks Scott for hooking me up with this place!

Best pita in the city!!! Huge selection of tobacco & charcoal for hookah. Amazing imported middle eastern food. Best price and very nice service! Highly recommended!

We ordered from their catering menu for New Year’s Eve. Everybody loved the food.
It was easy to order, very friendly on the phone.
Everything came nicely wrapped, labeled.
We would order again.

The store offers fresh pita bread and many middle eastern grocery items. Their homemade hummus and baba ganoush are simply delicious. The staff are very friendly greet everyone. Outstanding!

Very good service. I got the chicken shawarma combo and lentil soup, it was delicious!

Love this bakery and grocery store! Has the best Arabic pita bread in the area! Always freshly made bread, cheese pies, zaatar pies, and a couple other types of good breads.
Also the grocery part has all my ingredients to assist with my Palestinian cooking. I don’t think they have a meat area other then cold cut meats but that’s not a problem. Also has great service and plenty of parking!

This is the new location in skokie. Its like a combo of a banquet hall or a hotel married to a fast food restaurant. Strange but it works. The hummus is awesome. The sandwiches and dinners are good. I’ve had better in Albany Park but it’s good. The staff is super friendly. Try it if you are in the area but don’t go out of your way…

Pita Inn is my favorite lunch place ever — you cannot find a better value for amazingly tasty food! Get the business lunch special and sample various Mideastern meats and falafel. The spicy sauce (on the side) packs a flavorful punch.
The larger, newer location still has parking issues. It seems this place needs a parking structure in order to accomodate the demand.

By far the best bread. WE Love the bread. Service is very good also. If you love fresh baked pita bread, this is where you get bags of it.

I bought lamb kabobs and fresh pita from here and was satisfied with the selection. The housemade tahini sauce is lovely, and the hot sauce is tasty and they give you quite a bit. This is a great spot to get that middle eastern fix. On our way back home from Chicago my friend and I stopped at Pita Inn and ordered dinner to go. She also bought a HUGE tub of hot sauce for only 6 bux. After grabbing our meals we went our separate ways, it was snowing and she needed to get back to Milwaukee, I needed to get on the road to Madison. I couldn’t help it though, I hung out in the neighborhood for a bit and checked out the market. The hummus is great, the halva, grape leaves, and cheese pies enticing. Everything is house made and prepared fresh daily.
You can also get a hookah and complete your meal with a good smoke. This was the hallmark of our life for close to four years before our friends moved to another country. You stop by someone’s home and the hookah is immediately brought out, the coals with inventive flavors prepared, and a good time had by all laughing and smoking into the night — eating good homemade food.
I almost bought a hookah. Almost.

I come here and get excited for middle eastern but always get disappointed… I think I have learned my lesson!

This store is right near my In Laws — wish it was near me, would stop in regularly for bread and premarinated stuff. Can’t really beat the prices. They do what they do, well.

I love this place. Meat is tender, food is always hot when it should be and it’s delicious! Great place to dine in or take out!

This place represents a north shore middle eastern place, as Kate mentions. First and foremost, that means tons of awesome foods such as Halva, Olives, and just about everything you can get at Pita Inn. In addition they have some unique things, like loose leaf earl grey tea (tea. earl grey. hot.) at an awesome price and very large quantities of hummus, which is uniquely oil free. Even at Pita Inn they add some olive oil, and it’s unique to see a hummus without oil remaining so creamy. The cheese pies with thyme are absolutely amazing, and so are the little spinach feta pies that they prepare. Everything above is cooked/​prepared fresh daily, and the taste shows for it. Even the pita, which you can get in giant quantities there. I think the problem is that you can probably eat an entire stack of their pita almost by itself because it’s so fresh/​delicious. The baklawa is great, and who doesn’t love grape leaves?
All in all, this is an awesome place for what you can get. I would prefer to go here over village market for most things.
Oh, and Hookas. You can get pretty pimp hookas and related equipment here, as well.

This is to the right of the Dempster location pita inn.
The web site for the store is incorrectly listed on here, the correct web site should be:
As you walk in to the store, you are greeted with homey arabic music. The whole store is very clean, it does have a faint smell of spices, which is typical of most middle eastern or southeastern asian grocery stores. Personally, I think this is quite inviting and authentic.
They have hookahs on display above the register counter. Freshly baked baklava and pitas. Their pitas and baklavas look legit, a lot of option and looks very authentic. Considering the fact that pita inn bakes their own pitas, I would say this is hands down as fresh of pitas as you can get.
There are a line of fridges in the back of the store for refrigerated goods. About 4 isles of food well stocked on shelves. Cheese and different pickled goods to the right side of the store on display glass cabinets.
The location of the store is very convenient, close to many suburbs outside of Chicago. After shopping here you can dine at the famous pita inn restaurant right next door. Do be mindful that this grocer closes earlier than the restaurant, at 9pm, so you may want to come shop here first before you eat at the restaurant if you were coming here later at night.
Overall, a great facility, not a haven of middle eastern goods but it will definitely have your basic needs.

Supposedly if you come during the day you can see them making the pita bread they serve next door at the Pita Inn restaurant! I came at night so I wasn’t able to catch them baking the bread, but I was able to get a bag of fresh pita bread that was still steaming. Stopped by after work one day to quickly pick up some food for a pot luck, and what better than soft & warm pita, and fresh hummus and baba ghannoug? I already knew their hummus was going to be awesome, but that night I discovered the greatness that is their baba ghannoug. I had no idea that eggplant could taste so good! They also have plenty of other groceries and of course baklava and other sweets!

Authentic Middle Eastern food and great prices make it worth my while to drive 35 minutes north of the city to feast at Pita Inn. I can never go without ordering the dozen falafel and the lamb kabob sandwich, which comes with a side of tahini and a very spicy sauce (proceed with caution!). This combination always hits the spot and I have never left feeling like something was missing from my meal.
Now, beware that you don’t come here for the ambiance. It’s a step up from the sticky table cloth, hodge podge of art work and nick-​knacks you’ll find at other small family owned ethnic dining establishments. Pita Inn does have a Mediterranean vibe that makes me feel comfy. Also, this is a place where you place your order when you walk in, wait for your number to be called to pick up your order and where you seat yourself. Honestly, the food is so good that these factors don’t even remotely deter me from dining here. I was a fan at first bite years ago and will remain so forever!

First, it looks to me that some of these reviews (and most if not all the negative ones) are for the restaurant next door.
Not to be confused with that, the Pita Inn Market and Bakery is a great little grocery store with some outstanding Middle Eastern selections. When I drove up, there was a door open next to the entrance. The machine was pumping out fresh pita’s and they had then spread out throughout the kitchen to cool them. Mmmm. What a great smell.
Walking into the store, it’s not impressive – this is not Whole Foods, or Sunset. But when I took some the to look around and wow!! – what a place.
Fresh pita bread packaged by the dozen for $ 2. A great selection of fresh olives behind the counter. Fresh, homemade baba ghanouj, stuffed grape leaves and hummus – all were excellent. A huge selection of off the shelf middle eastern products.
Nice place. Friendly people who were happy to answer questions from a dumb WASP about the selections.
I would go there for the fresh pitas alone. But the rest was icing on the cake, so to speak.

I do not get the fuss over this place. I had the businesman’s special (made me think of Romy and Michelle movie) for $ 4.95. Yes, a lot of food for a small price.
But food was mediocre at best. Chicken was thin, dry, and had little flavor. Falaffel was overfried. Lamb was dry, came in small strips, and had been cut from skewer long ago. Beef was overcooked and had little flavor. Pita was a little hard but not because it was toasted. Salad was a few lettuce scraps, tomato, and watery dressing. Rice was bland. Overall preparation was sloppy, bland, and mass marketed. There are much better Middle Eastern restaurants in Chicago.

Used to love Pita; not so much anymore. Here’s what’s happened to me the last few times I’ve been there:
1. Ordered the chicken fatuoosh salad, which I love, for carryout. When I get home, I see what I got was the chicken fatuoosh salad minus the chicken. Not a bit of bird in the picture. So I call them and complain, and all they say is «sorry.» About a month before this, I had ordered the salad and when I got it home there was no dressing on the thing. They need some quality control here!
2. I don’t like being addressed as «Boss.» The guys at the cash register may think that’s cute, or sarcastic, but I don’t like it.
3. Yesterday we went with friends for dinner. We ordered two kibeah and four dinners. As usual (and I have no complaint about this), the kibiah was not finished when our dinners were. OK, no problem, they will let us know. Half an hour later, we are pretty much done eating, and still no kibeah. So I go up and check, and they say it’s coming. At 45 minutes in, we have finished our dinners and are waiting, so I go up again and ask what’s up? The guy tells me kibeah takes a while, which I know. I ask him if it takes 45 minutes and show him my receipt with the time shown on it. He checks with the cooks, and they all kind of shrug and he tells me it’s on the way. Our two kibeahs, way overcooked, finally show up about 55 minutes after we order them. No apologies. No offer for free Cokes. No nothing.
Not the way to treat customers. But I guess they don’t figure they need my business, as they are very busy every night. So I guess I’ll not be back in a LONG while.