Can’t decide? Trying several dishes is Mezze’s style

by Lynn Williams

maindish@baltimoreguide.com

Two trends have been going head to head in America’s restaurants. In one corner, the Supersizer, serving up massive slabs of meat, mountains of pasta, and desserts as big as your head. Having tossed out any reasonable notion of portion size, it’s murder on our waistlines, but keenly appeals to our love of a bargain.

The Supersizer’s opponent we’ll call the Appetizer. This is the stronghold of the small plate; think hotspots like Tapas Teatro, Red Maple and Pazo, dim sum brunches, and any sushi bar you can name.

And, of course, Kali’s Mezze, my restaurant du jour.

I loved Mezze, as I would, and could, happily make a meal of appetizers at just about any restaurant in town. And Mezze, whose menu features pages and pages of tempting Mediterranean small-serving specialties—“mezze” is Greek for appetizer—is especially attuned to the tastes of we A.D.D.-type diners who prefer mix-and-match variety to whopping plates of meat, veg and starch.

If you are dining alone, start with a plate or two, chosen from the “vegetable,” “seafood,” and/or “meat and poultry” sections. (Yes, decisions are hard, but you can always order more!) The two of us led off with a quartet of dishes to share: sweet and meltingly-soft roasted eggplant, stuffed with tomato, onions and herbs and topped with haloumi cheese ($7.25), oven-baked oysters with a balsamic-spiked topping of spinach and feta ($8.25), tuna carpaccio ($8.25), whose colorful and delicious blend of thin-sliced ahi tuna, tangy greens and shaved parmesan was the hit of the meal, and pastirma ($6.25), baked phyllo triangles filled with tomato, cured beef and Mediterranean cheeses, both interesting and familiarly pizza-like.

Strictly for research purposes (yeah, right) we added another mezze, a pepper-and-pecorino crusted fried calamari ($8.25) drizzled with garlicky aioli. Terrific flavors, but the chewy little squid gave our jaws a workout.

We chose two desserts ($5.95), both made in-house, and served in normal restaurant-sized portions: silky almond cheesecake on a plate painted with raspberry puree, and a traditional Greek dessert, katafii, which featured a syrup-drenched shredded wheat crust, subtle pistachio-vanilla custard, and a small scoop of cinnamon ice cream.

The mezzes are delivered speedily, one at a time, from an open kitchen at the back of the casual-elegant, Rita St. Clair-designed first floor dining and bar area. (A metal staircase, curving up to a more intimate second-floor dining room, suggests an ocean liner.) Some of the dishes, however, are prepared in the kitchen of Kali’s Court, Mezze’s adjoining parent restaurant and one of the city’s best. We’d trust these folks with even the most outré or unpromising menu items. Shark fritters? Braised dandelion greens? I’d bet they’re great.

The Latest Dish…

The new restaurant at 1738 Thames Street isn’t really a restaurant—yet. At this writing it’s still a construction site, with paper taped over the windows to deter the curious. But it’s already got a name—Miss Irene’s—newspaper ads, the beginnings of a website, and a planned spring opening. Masterminded by the folks at the Waterfront Hotel restaurant (1710 Thames), this Fells Point bistro will feature Mediterranean food and fine wines. It’s named for Irene Glyphis, a beloved longtime resident who ran a tavern, Glyphis’s River Drive Inn, on the same corner, and lived upstairs. If Miss Irene’s namesake restaurant is as loveable as Miss Shirley’s, Miss Lynn will be a very happy person.