Sometimes restaurants are known for a given specialty. Sometimes the guests of a restaurant define the specialty of the house by their patterns of ordering from the menu. The latter seems the case at Café Mediterranean, where two dishes are among the most popular week-in and week-out, regardless of the season. These dishes are the lamb shank and its Near East neighbor, moussaka.
In its raw, uncooked state, lamb shank is tough as shoe leather due to all the connective tissue, but the meat is flavorful. The trick is to braise the meat over low heat for hours on end, until the meat becomes fall-apart tender. So, how does one do that? Fahri Ozdil, owner-operator of Café Mediterranean, gave Dining Out some of the secret: “We start with the lamb shank and we use the fresh celery, onion, the carrot, garlic — all fresh — bay leaf, and we boil like six hours; slow (over low heat). The meat, it gets really tender, so tender you cannot believe it. Then after that with the liquid we make with fresh and dry herbs, and the tomato and pepper paste, we make a beautiful red sauce. Really, really tastes wonderful,” he said.
Those are steps one and two in the three step process. Next, the shanks of lamb are placed in a shallow baking pan, the red sauce is poured over the shanks, and the pan is placed in the oven at a moderate temperature for another forty five minutes of cooking time. The result? “The meat, it falls apart, absolutely. No question about it. So tender! Very popular; one of the most popular dishes. It takes all day to do this dish, and when we run out at night, we’re out.
“People, they are coming here for this dish. We are seeing a lot of new faces, and mostly they hear from friends and family, or even they come in from out of town — California, New York, all over, and they hear about us. And they order the lamb shank when they see it on the menu,” Ozdil said.
Sharing the limelight in the popularity circle is the moussaka entrée, which perhaps is the most famous of the eggplant dishes from the Near East region of the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas. Originally from Greece, this dish is one of the most popular in Ozdil’s native Turkey as well. It is in Turkey where eggplant is found in more than six hundred recipes, and lamb is among the most favored meats. Moussaka combines the two in one dish.
“The way we make it — the Turkish way — completely different than others (making the dish), especially the spices and herbs. Others, they don’t use the same (spices and herbs, which are of Turkish origin in many cases). We take the eggplant, on the bottom (of the prep dish). And then the lamb and beef combination we cook it with the chopped onion, red and green peppers, twenty different fresh and dry herbs, and then we finish with a béchamel sauce — a creamy, cheese sauce,” Ozdil said. For kosher-style diners-out, Ozdil stated that his kitchen can hold the sauce for them, but they must call ahead the day before to request the hold.
In the dessert department, one new dish Jewish diners out may wish to ask about is a confection more likely found in a French restaurant — chocolate souffle! The asking is better put forward at the beginning of the dining experience, since souffles are involved dishes that take time to prepare. But the way my taste buds remember chocolate souffle, it’s worth the extra effort to line up a treat that is rare on today’s restaurant scene.
While for many months the pandemic had disrupted all aspects of dining out, the news is good in the case of Café Mediterranean, according to Ozdil. “We are still doing amazing and the business is strong. We had an amazing summer, with people (who have been) coming for a long time to dine with us. We are seeing a lot of new faces this summer also, people coming because they hear about us,” he said. At the same time, staffing can be an issue, but none of that has dampened the enthusiasm of the crowds, especially on the weekends, Ozdil claimed.
See you at Café Mediterranean!
