Restaurant Rave

Attention Haligonians! It's my turn to recommend a restaurant. If you have never been to Mezza Mediterranean Grill on Quinpool, get your asses in gear.

Living on the outskirts of town, we use Quinpool Road a lot, and have driven by this place many, many times since moving here. It stood out as something to check out because it has a classy, modern exterior...which most of the restaurants along that stretch of road don't have. Lots of Greek and Mediterranean type eateries, but most of them are of the traditional or greasy spoon variety (not that I don't love those too!).

My girlfriend and I decided we wanted to go to a movie...then decided to make it dinner and a movie....so instead of sticking to the huge-ass Empire theatres that are both in suburbia with no decent restaurants nearby, we opted to hit the Oxford Theatre which gave us the option of trying Mezza for dinner. Boy are we glad we made that decision!

The restaurant wasn't overly busy or anything for a Thursday night, which was fine by us for our chitchat. The interior decor is modern, yet still obviously middle eastern. Warm oranges and brown, wrought iron art, dark linens on the tables, incredible wooden ceiling with carvings. The menu offered a wide selection of Lebanese cuisine...everything from kabobs to salads with fresh mint to kebbe and manouche. So many things I had never heard of, but with full descriptions everything sounded wonderful. We settled on the Mezza Sampler Platter (mezza means tapas) for two, which had portions of 2 salads, 2 dips and 4 tapas.

The hummus and baba ganouche were both creamy and delicious. They brought us a basket of warm pitas and I honestly just wanted to dive into the platter with my hands...but thought better and used my knife and fork. :) The phyllo cheese rolls were freaking fantastic...good thing there were only two of those! And I've had stuffed grapes leaves before that I didn't much care for, but these Warek Enab were super yummy. There was a kebbe and a vegetable kebbe...we didn't realize they were different so we each grabbed one....mine was with the lamb and beef and it was pretty tasty. The center of the platter was piled with taboule salad filled with minced fresh herbs and also fatouche salad that was to die for.

Can you tell I liked it?

The platter was $25 and more than enough for both of us. We paired it with a bottle of New Zealand Sauv Blanc, and finished with a slice of Bailey's cake (holy freaking good!). Oh, and they had these yummy little pretzels sticks instead of a bread basket....toasted with sesame seeds, I could've eaten a whole bowl.

DBF isn't a huge fan of such stuff, but I'm hoping I can get him to live on the edge a little because it was sooooo good. If anything, it would be a nice romantic little date night to sit at the bar for a bottle of wine and some dessert.

I highly recommend!