Cafe Mediterranean

Some of you may have heard of the storm that hit the gulf-coast. Seeing as I live there I had to leave for a bit. Right now I'm staying in Ohio at my grandmothers house. I have a lot of relatives in Ohio and my parents have friends here as well, so an old friend of my mothers eMailed her and they talked on the phone. He asked us if we wanted to go out for dinner and mentioned that he knew several places around here. They decided to wait until we had gotten to his house and talked to discuss where to eat. After they had finished catching up on old a new times we asked where they wanted to eat and we talked about the local eateries and finally settled on the Cafe Mediterranean, a nice little place with good hummus. Hummus is garbanzos, olive oil, tahini, lemon and/or lime juice all mixed together into a paste that goes nice with any choice of bread or vegetables. Anyways, my family decided to go there because we all like Mediterranean food, and i like hummus a lot. We sat down to a table with the nicest folded red napkins, two identical forks, and a knife all arranged very neatly. the owner, who told us he was of Turkish decent, came up to our table and asked us if we had ever been here before and promised us it would not be our last visit. We pondered over the menus for a bit and I and everyone but one of the six got the Falafel Dinner (fried garbanzos and vegetables with hummus and a salad of tomato, cucumber, parsley, onions and scallions with vinegar and olive-oil dressing, along with some tahini sauce) and some got a zucchini pancake (fried zucchini with a cream sauce, it was a special so its make-up wasn't on the takeout menu I got) and one got the Eggplant in Sauce. The portions are very large and everyone split their dishes so I got to taste a bit of everything. The first thing i tasted was the zucchini pancake, and it was amazing. I mean absolutely ASTOUNDING! I automatically knew that the rest of the food was going to be quite good. the next thing i had was some of the Eggplant in Sauce and it was VERY good. I've never had eggplant prepared quite like that and the best eggplant I've had up to now was a Punjabi mixture in an Indian restaurant, this cold eggplant soup-ish thing doesn't quite match it in quality but it's still very good. The next i had was the falafel dinner and I have never had better falafel in my life. Most everything I've had before was mixes out of boxes. I freakin' HATED those before i ate at the Cafe Mediterranean and i hate them even more now! The meal was served with baskets of hot fresh pita-bread which was all used up by the time the meal went into desert. The hummus was the best I've had, including the kind I've made. (Believe me, I've had all kinds of hummus and this was the best) The salad had feta cheese and had the best dressing I've tasted. The iceberg lettuce was kind of brown and the tomato slices were pale but the rest of the food was nicely made and there's no complaints beyond that little bit. For dessert I had some of the best baklava I've EVER tasted. light, soft, sweet, and heavenly. buttery-sweet flavor that spreads through your mouth like sweet nectar of the sweetest, most divine fruit. I had a lemonade to go with it and it was one of the best I've had aside from home-made. It was simply an amazing meal and I would like to go there again. When i get home I'll scan the menu I got and you can see all their dishes for yourselves but for now you'll have to settle for the website, phone number and address. I give the food a 9.8* rating, the service a 10.1*, and the conditions and setup a 10.1* rating, which comes out to a 9.99* rating. intense food and friendly service makes for a fine meal! When we commented on the fine quality of the food he said that the Turkish Chefs were the best in the world, and I'm inclined to agree. Stop by if you're ever in the Cincinnati area, you'll not be disappointed!
Cafe Mediterranean
9525 Kenwood Road
Cincinnati, Ohio, 45242
513-745-9386
http://cafe-mediterranean.com/