Cafe Paloma

93 Yesler Way (Pioneer Square), 405-1920. Lunch Mon-Sat 9:30 am-5:30 pm; dinner Wed-Sat 5:30-10:30 pm; closed Sundays.

At Cafe Paloma I had some lovely little Turkish meatballs--called "köfte," slightly charred and faintly spicy, served with yogurt and the freshest, brightest tomato sauce around--all the while considering Cafe Paloma's subtitle: "The Mediterranean Passion."

I was partly wondering why restaurants have subtitles, but also thinking about what Mediterranean food has come to mean--in the narrowest cocktail-party sense of the term, a sort of derived Italianish Dean & DeLuca cuisine of roasted peppers and goat cheese and stuffed grape leaves.

The food at Cafe Paloma is a reminder that the Mediterranean Sea is gazed upon by people other than Italians and Greeks. There's Africa (including Morocco and Tunisia) to the south, plus Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel to the east. If you're interested in this constellation of cuisines--Middle Eastern, North African, even some of deeper Asia, such as Iranian--then I suggest you acquire a copy of Claudia Roden's New Book of Middle Eastern Food (Alfred A. Knopf), and cook your way through it. It's my summer project.

What Mediterranean means at Cafe Paloma is small portions of different good things, many of them Turkish (the owner, Sedat Uysal, is from Ankara). For example, the köfte ($6.50), which according to Roden is one of the few dishes invented by a Turkish restaurant chef, and the delicious havuç salata ($5); or a carrot salad that is at the same time sweet, tart, creamy, and a little buttery from pine nuts; and the sütlaç ($4), a traditional Turkish rice pudding that is served cold with a dusting of cinnamon and currants.

Other dishes come from a more pan-Mediterranean tapas/meze/happy-hour ethic: skinny eggplant marinated and grilled ($5), redolent of one of the Christmas spices (allspice? cardamom? cloves?) and slightly bitter; a skewer of grilled calamari ($7) marinated in olive oil, salt, and pepper (Uysal was not happy with the calamari, and sent his cook out with another portion; this was a little embarrassing, but you have to admire the Mediterranean passion); as well as plenty of foods you recognize: hummus, dolmas, stuffed peppers. The grilled pita served with everything is nice--not too pillowy, not the humorless and withholding supermarket variety.

By the end of the meal I was as mellow and compliant as an old piece of suede. You don't always have to be intellectually surprised by dinner.