Dimassi’s Mediterranean Buffet

FOOD

Dimassi’s makes its pita in-house daily, so the dips come with bread made for the job. Tear off a piece for hummus made with chickpeas, tahini, lemon and garlic, then try baba ghanouge, the roasted-eggplant dip. Spicy hummus adds peppers to the original; the avocado version includes spinach. A little of each lets you compare them without devoting the whole plate to dips. Though that would be understandable.

Tabouli gives parsley a prominent place alongside tomato, bulgur, onion, lemon and olive oil. Fattoush combines cucumber and tomato with mint and radish, while cabbage salad brings shredded cabbage and carrots with lemon and mint. Their lemon and herbs are welcome alongside the hot dishes, especially when you want something sharp and herbal beside rice or meat. Falafel, made with ground chickpeas, parsley and spices, and rice-stuffed vegetable grape leaves add more substance to a plate of salads.

The rice choices deserve a decision of their own. Rice with lentils comes topped with onions; other versions use dill, vermicelli or seasoned ground beef. Basmati with peas, carrots and turmeric offers another option. Choose one that suits the rest of dinner rather than treating rice as an automatic scoop. Lentils and onions, for instance, make a good foundation for a vegetable-focused plate, with hummus or cucumber-mint yogurt alongside.

Okra and green beans are served in seasoned tomato sauces, while Dimassi’s eggplant includes pomegranate molasses. The molasses brings a sweet-tart ingredient into the vegetable selection, quite different from the lemon and garlic used on the potatoes. Mixed grilled vegetables include squash, zucchini and peppers. The menu marks many of these dishes as vegan.

Kafta kabob combines ground beef with parsley, onion and garlic. Chicken kabob uses marinated chicken with oregano, tomato, pepper and onion, while chicken with sumac includes onions, lemon and olive oil. Sumac is a tart spice, so that chicken offers a different seasoning choice from the lemon-pepper flour used for Dimassi’s fried chicken. Garlic sauce and cucumber-mint yogurt give you a pungent or cooling accompaniment without asking the whole table to choose the same one.

The broader menu includes braised lamb shank and two rice specialties worth knowing about. Mansaf pairs lamb and rice with a yogurt blend; makloube brings together chicken, rice, potatoes, eggplant and cauliflower, topped with nuts. These are representative menu choices, with availability depending on the restaurant and service. If a particular specialty is essential to dinner, check with that location before planning the meal around it.

For dessert, baklava combines filo pastry, walnuts and cinnamon, while namoura uses semolina, coconut and yogurt. They offer two quite different ways to finish: layered pastry or a semolina sweet. Rice pudding adds milk and cinnamon, and seasonal fruit is another choice. Dessert is part of the buffet, which makes a small piece of something unfamiliar an easy addition. Leave a little room for the namoura if baklava usually gets your first vote.