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projectsnourishment for snackers
I'm a certified grazer—I like to try a little bit of everything (well, everything vegetarian) and a lot of desert, but I'm usually hard-pressed to choke down an entire entrée. Until this weekend I thought that my only options for satisfying my preferred mode of eating were tapas, dim sum, Ethiopian food, or pissing off wait staff by refusing to order a main course at other types of restaurants.
But I've got a new addition to my mental list of snacker-friendly cuisine: meze!
According to wikipedia, small dishes called meze are common in a variety of Mediterranean countries, including Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, and Serbia, but I found out about it during my pre-dining research on a Turkish spot on the UES called Beyoglu. According to its 2002 NYT review, Beyoglu's original owner insisted that it was a meyhane rather than a "Turkish restaurant." Apparently in Turkey meyhane are bars that serve meze dishes along with alcohol. Beyoglu is now under different ownership according to a more recent New York mag review, but its menu is still (delightfully!) appetizer-heavy.
Meyhane traditionally served wine, according to wikipedia, but now more commonly feature raki, the Turkish "national drink," which I got to try for the first time at Beyoglu. Raki is an anise-flavored liquor (you recognize anise, which tastes like really strong licorice, from your Oscar Wilde-inspired research on absinthe) that arrives as a clear liquid with a dish full of ice on the side. When you drop in the ice cubes (which seems to be the right thing to do under the circumstances), they melt almost immediately and your raki turns milky white.
Raki has an extremely strong flavor, but it was perfect for sipping with meze. Although Beyoglu got panned a bit by NYC nosh (and I agree that the octopus was chewy), the hummus and puffy bread were amazingly good and any place that encourages ordering multiple appetizers and no main courses gets an almost immediate gold star (and a spot in the sidebar) in my book.
Patrick said,
I dig the ethiopian as well. Took a friend of mine to Queen of Sheba a few months back. We had fun, but we couldn't figure out what to call the bread that they serve everything on, so we just addressed it as "plate." As in: "Would you like some more plate?"
comment posted on March 26, 2007 at 19:11
lauren said,
Wikipedia says it\'s called injera. There was a great Ethiopian place on M Street in DC, and when I took my aunt and uncle there one day after Passover ended we were all wondering what the Ethiopian Jews do on Passover (injera seeming decidedly not kosher for Passover).
comment posted on March 26, 2007 at 23:29
lauren said,
I decided I needed to answer that question at long last. According to Ras Dashen, an Ethiopian restaurant in Chicago, Ethiopian Jews replace injera with shimbera during Passover—shimbera being like matzo but made with chickpeas. Which actually sounds like it might be tastier than the flour variety.
comment posted on March 27, 2007 at 22:23