A mediterranean food near me search in Los Feliz points at a pale, bright room on Hollywood Boulevard where the menu is arranged so that the vegetable dishes come first and carry the meal. Kismet cooks Eastern Mediterranean food with a vegetable-forward structure, which is less a dietary position than a recognition of how that region actually eats.
The vegetable half of this menu is the reason to come. Ask Karpo what to order at Kismet tonight.
What vegetable-forward means here
It does not mean vegetarian. There is meat on the menu, including spit-roasted and grilled dishes, and it is good. What it means is that the vegetable dishes are constructed with the same ambition as the protein ones rather than being assembled as sides.
That inversion matches the source cuisines. Across the eastern Mediterranean, a meal is typically a table of many small dishes, most of them vegetable, pulse or grain based, with meat appearing in smaller quantity. The Western restaurant convention of one large protein with two sides is the foreign structure, not this one.
The practical result is that a table of four can eat extremely well here without anyone ordering a main course, which is the correct way to use the menu.
How to order
Start with two or three dips and spreads with bread. These are the foundation and they are where a kitchen in this idiom either shows technique or does not: correct texture, enough salt, enough acid, and a generous pour of good olive oil on top.
Then take three or four vegetable dishes across different treatments, so you have something charred, something raw or pickled, something braised and something with a grain or pulse in it. Add one larger dish for the table if you want it.
Order bread generously. Flatbread here is made in house and is a dish rather than an accompaniment, and running out halfway through a table of dips is the most avoidable mistake available.
What charring does to a vegetable
High, direct heat does two useful things at once. It drives off surface moisture so the vegetable concentrates rather than steams, and it produces browning reactions that create hundreds of new aromatic compounds which were not present in the raw ingredient.
On something with natural sugars, like carrot, onion, cabbage or squash, those sugars also caramelise, which adds sweetness and a faint pleasant bitterness at the edges. That bitterness is doing important work: it balances the sweetness and keeps the dish from being one-note.
This is the technique that makes vegetable cooking interesting rather than worthy, and it is why the best dish on a menu like this is frequently a whole charred vegetable with a sauce under it.
Breakfast and the adjoining counter
There has historically been a related bakery and counter operation alongside the restaurant, serving pastries, coffee and breakfast items, which is worth knowing because it is a different and cheaper way into the same kitchen's work.
Morning service here is genuinely good and far less pressured than dinner. If you want to try the baking without committing to a full meal, that is the route. Check what is currently operating before planning around it.
Los Feliz
Los Feliz sits on the southern slopes below Griffith Park, east of Hollywood, and it is one of the more pleasant neighbourhoods in Los Angeles to be on foot in. The commercial strips along Hillhurst and Vermont hold bookshops, cinemas, bars and restaurants within a few walkable blocks.
Griffith Park is immediately north and is the obvious pairing: the observatory, the trails up to the sign viewpoints, and the Greek Theatre are all within the park. The hike to the observatory from the bottom of Fern Dell is the best free thing in the neighbourhood.
Barnsdall Art Park, with Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House on top of a small hill, is a short walk south and is one of the most underrated sites in the city. Parking is metered on the boulevards and restricted on the residential streets.
Booking and timing
Dinner books up, particularly at weekends. Early evening and weekday lunches are easier, and the room is better in daylight because the space is designed around natural light.
There is a patio, which in Los Angeles is usable most of the year. Confirm current hours, the menu format and the reservation policy before going.
Eastern Mediterranean, defined loosely
The phrase covers a great deal of ground: Turkish, Levantine, Greek, Armenian, Georgian and Persian cooking all border each other and have exchanged ingredients and techniques for centuries. A kitchen working in this register is drawing on a shared pantry of yoghurt, olive oil, sesame, sumac, pomegranate, bulgur, chickpeas and charcoal rather than reproducing one national cuisine.
Purists sometimes object to that looseness, and the objection is not unreasonable, since the region’s national cuisines are distinct and were shaped by histories that deserve to be named. The defence is that this particular kitchen is not claiming to be any one of them, and the cooking is specific rather than generic even when the label is not.
Bread as a course
Flatbread baked to order is a different food from flatbread reheated. Straight out of a very hot oven the surface blisters and the interior steams into a hollow pocket, and it stays that way for about ten minutes before it begins to toughen. That window is the entire reason to order it fresh and eat it first.
Practically, this means ordering bread when you order dips rather than waiting for the food to arrive, and ordering a second round later if the table is still going. It costs very little and it transforms every dip on the table.
Practical notes
Kismet, Hollywood Boulevard, Los Feliz, Los Angeles, with a related bakery counter alongside. Eastern Mediterranean menu of shared plates, vegetable-forward, patio seating, reservations advisable for dinner. Check current hours and what is operating before travelling.
Order two dips, three or four vegetable dishes across different techniques, plenty of bread, and one larger plate if the table wants it. Book ahead for dinner or come at lunch, and walk up to the observatory afterwards.
Tags: #LosAngeles #LosFeliz #Kismet #MediterraneanFood #Mezze #VegetableForward #LAFood #LARestaurants #GriffithPark #HollywoodBoulevard #LAEats #SharedPlates #LADinner #EastsideLA
All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Ask Karpo first
Want to know whether Kismet has a table tonight and what is on the vegetable side of the menu? Ask Karpo for availability, the patio situation, and a Griffith Park walk to pair with it.
