Clintonville’s Olive & Thyme presents a prolonged menu of Lebanese-Mediterranean delicacies

The selection of categories on the menu for Olive & Thyme Cafe stretches into double digits. Staring at that extended document, I understood it would get months to take in my way via it. Right after sampling many of Olive & Thyme’s dishes, I’d gladly acknowledge that obstacle. 

© Rob Hardin / Alive
The small family members platter at Olive & Thyme Cafe photographed on Wednesday, January 27, 2021. (Rob Hardin / Alive)

Serving in Clintonville since November, Olive & Thyme occupies a huge and vibrant space that even now resembles the Panera Bread branch it beforehand housed. On the newcomer’s web site, its meals is described as “modern and traditional Lebanese-Mediterranean delicacies.” On a plate, the meals evokes this description: If you like the fare geared up at Lavash Cafe (which is a pair of miles because of south on Significant Avenue), you are going to like the food items well prepared at Olive & Thyme. 

There is a explanation for this: Olive’s chef-proprietor Rami Sabra is the previous chef at Lavash, and Sabra’s main recipes have not changed considerably. As a result, items these kinds of as Olive’s dwelling-manufactured sturdy pita-model bread and its flavorful shawarmas and kebabs will please longtime Lavash fans (like me) positive to recognize fresh new and healthful-leaning meals reduce from the very same delicious fabric as Lavash’s

Olive gives fantastic values as nicely. In point, the “small” family platter — an enormous and great de facto buffet that could feed two times as many as the two to three diners it’s purportedly created for — is just one of the superior values all around.   

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The veggie stew-like Lebanese moussaka with rice and salad

The $45 deal features generous portions of (a la carte charges are supplied): sleek and luxurious, lemon-brightened hummus ($4) tangy, gently smoky and uncommonly rich baba ghanoush ($4) juicy chargrilled hen kebabs ($9) with genuine cookout taste oversized sausage-like, crowd-pleasing rooster kafta ($9) and beef + lamb kafta kebabs ($9) boatloads of fragrant beef shawarma ($9) and tangy rooster shawarma ($9) additionally a fattoush salad ($9) built with outstanding ingredients that, sad to say in my case, hadn’t been appropriately drained.

The phenomenal spread incorporates accompaniments that make the feast even extra exciting to consume: a week’s provide of property bread ($4) and fantastic saffron rice ($3.50) killer, salsa-like dwelling scorching sauce ($2.50) fluffy garlic sauce ($2.50) concentrated tahini sauce ($2.50) and household-pickled turnips ($2.50) with a horseradish-like kick.  

© Rob Hardin / Alive
A veggie platter from Olive & Thyme

Although likewise tasty and significantly from tiny, the Olive & Thyme veggie platter ($14) — which could be dinner for 1 hungry consumer or a great shared appetizer — is fewer extravagant. Conjuring a Mediterranean remedy to the Japanese bento, it is Olive’s superb hummus furthermore (a la carte rates are furnished) a lemony, parsley-ahead and refreshing tabbouleh salad ($9) initially-fee falafel ($4) moreover outstanding fried cauliflower ($9) whose all-natural and nutty sweetness was enlivened by lemon.

Olive’s shawarma and kafta kebab sandwiches ($8 just about every) will flavor deliciously common to Lavash patrons no matter if certain in pita or a toasted and thinner “wheat wrap.” But the very advisable dwelling burger ($12) will taste deliciously unique.

It was a juicy chargrilled patty with zesty seasoning on a toasted sesame seed roll with lettuce, tomato and a ketchup-and-mayo-tasting sauce. The burger arrives with excellent associates: wonderful steak fries and a mayo-based but energetic coleslaw.

© Rob Hardin / Alive
Mocha cake, an attractive dessert

I also liked the tomatoey veggie stew-like Lebanese moussaka ($14, with righteous vermicelli rice plus a great salad). If you’re only peckish, the peppery lentil soup ($3.50) was a perky-but-calming winter hotter, and it is tough to beat Olive’s affordable house-manufactured fatayer — savory very little pastry parcels — with cheese ($1), spinach ($1) or “meat” (tomatoey, crushed-meatball-like $1.50).  

Don’t slumber on desserts, this kind of as the chewy, sweet and irresistible chocolate chip cookie ($2) the $1 farmor’s (Swedish almond-fashion) cookie and the lovely, gentle and inhalable mocha cake ($4 for each slice).

But Olive also gives Lebanese sausages (makanek, $14), a tomato-and-green-beans dish (loubia, $9), fried red snapper ($20) and, nicely, I could probably go on for months.

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At a look

The place: Olive & Thyme

Area: 4519 N. Superior St., Clintonville

Contact: 614-826-3020, www.oliveandthymecafe.com

This post at first appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Food items evaluation: Clintonville’s Olive & Thyme provides a lengthy menu of Lebanese-Mediterranean delicacies