Petra, A Notch Above the Med

After a day at the park with Tanya & her kids Mila & Copper (Sofia's "cuckoos"), we head out to check out the new Mediterranean place in town. Located next to Wal-Mart & Lowe's way out Nicholasville Rd & Man o War, Petra sits in a gigantic space, the former home of Macaroni Grill. I immediately wondered if they could handle the rent but Tanya reminds me the space was empty for a couple years. Hopefully they got a good deal.

Their menu was a cross-section of Med & Greek fare with a few unfortunate American concessions thrown in (club sandwich?!) The flaming cheese (saganaki) caught our eye & I'd remember seeing it afire tableside at a Greek place in NYC. We ordered shwerma & kefta sandwiches & I subbed fatoosh salad for the fries. The kids got cheese pizzas & hummus.

The restaurant was huge and the meager lunch crowd only made the cavernous space more pronounced. The wine racks were empty & the walls underadorned. The nearby bar reminded me of an Applebees (or, I presume, a Macaroni Grill).

The cheese arrived & was lit up to the delight of the kids. We could barely wait for it to cool before digging into its fried, salty goodness. I couldn't tell if this was goat's milk feta or something super-authentic like Kefalograviera, Kasseri, Kefalotyri (not that I know what those are). Stuffing the cheese into the soft pockets of the homemade pita made for nice tiny sandwiches.

My fattoush salad was also very savory, its romaine, tomatoes, cucumbers & large (pita?) croutons well dressed. The sandwich, unexpectedly & dissappointingly was wrapped in your garden-variety pita bread. Dry, thin and tasting like poster board. Decidely NOT homemade. We asked the waiter about that and he too agreed that they should make the sandwiches from their homemade bread. He was eager to relay the message to management. The hummus was good, though not memorable.

To make up for the delay on the kids' pizzas, the waiter offered up complimentary baklavas, 2 Greek, 2 Mediterranean. The former long batons, the latter open in the middle and stuffed with pistachios. The Med version was more unique & less cloyingly sweet.

Points deducted for the dry pita bread & far-flung location (made worse by not being to avoid N'ville Rd or Man o War, two of the most traffic-clogged streets in town) but overall a satisfying experience. We'll be back for dinner, for sure.