The savoury side of the menu

It is a dessert cafe, but nobody wants to arrive hungry and start with chocolate. The savoury side covers that: the Golden Bites pies from the oven, and ten appetizers, most of them available as a small plate or a large one. Order a couple of pies and a plate of hummus first, then move on to the crepes. That is how most of our longer tables run an evening.

Manakish and the pies

Manakish is breakfast, lunch and a snack across the Levant, and it is almost impossible to find in this part of Rhode Island. The Za'atar Pie is thyme, sumac and sesame in olive oil baked onto dough. Alongside it: the spinach pie, the large cheese pie, the muhammara pie and the muhammara and cheese pie, the veggie roll with tomato, carrot, onion, olives and oregano, a mini pizza for the children, and lahmajoun, the thin flatbread with a spiced topping. The pies are listed with the sweets on the Eastern sweets page because they come from the same oven; the prices are on the menu.

Mezze

Hummus and chickpeas with tahini are the familiar ones. Babaghanoush, mamaghanoush and mtabbal mashawi are the smoked aubergine family, and they are where the menu gets interesting: mtabbal is the tahini-and-yoghurt version, babaghanoush is usually chunkier and sharper, and mamaghanoush sits between them. Muhammara with walnuts is the red pepper dip. Tabbouli and fattoush are the two salads. Grape leaves are by the plate, and fattet hummos is the layered one, chickpeas and bread under yoghurt, which is a meal rather than a starter. Most come in a small or a large size; the menu below shows both prices.

What is vegetarian, and what is not

The pies and the mezze are cheese, spinach, za'atar, vegetables and pulses, and apart from lahmajoun and its spiced meat topping, everything listed on this page is vegetarian. The meat dishes live on the shawarma page instead. A table with mixed requirements can order freely from this one, which is the reason it is worth knowing where the line falls.

Before dessert, or instead of it

A few mezze with a stack of za'atar pies is a proper start to an evening, and it is what to order if someone at the table does not want dessert at all. What is on this page is pastry and mezze rather than a main course; for that, the shawarma plates are the closest thing the kitchen does. For a group, a spread of Golden Bites is the cheapest way to feed several people, and larger platters are arranged through the catering page.