Meze Moon Mediterranean Cuisine — Restaurant in Chico

After hearing about the new Mediterranean restaurant Meze Moon yesterday, my boyfriend and I decided we had to check it out for our date night. We arrived at 4 and the restaurant was empty, and remained empty until we had finished our main course.

Emin, the owner, was incredibly friendly and welcoming. He escorted us to a table by the window, explaining that a romantic dinner means sitting next to each other and facing the window.

He explained every part of the appetizer sampler platter we ordered, and offered a reading of my boyfriend's coffee grounds, which was very entertaining.

While pursuing the menu, Emin poured our water (and left a bottle, much needed today!)and brought a basket of bread and a garlicky herb butter.

For the appetizer, we ordered the Meze Moon combo plate - hummus, baba ghanoush, tzatziki, dolma, falafel, fried feta, sigar borek, tabouki, olives, and a tomato, bell pepper and onion relish. Every item on the plate was delicious, i think my favorites were the sigar borek (spinach and feta wrapped in filo dough) and the falafel with tzatziki.

Our entrées were beef & lamb gyro and salmon kebab plates. Both were extremely flavorful. The salmon was tender and juicy, but crisp on the edges. The gyro meat was cut from whole pieces of meat, not a ground mixture. The salad was dressed with a light lemony vinaigrette

At Emin's recommendation, we ordered Turkish coffee while looking over the dessert menu. We settled on kunefe - sweet Lebanese cheese in shredded filo dough, baked and finished in a sweet syrup. The coffee was very strong (huge plus for me), but smooth and not as bitter as I expected. It was a perfect complement to the kunefe, which was a great balance of sweet and salty. The syrup was just the right level of sweet and didn't overwhelm the other flavors.

This meal was by far the best food we've had at a restaurant in months. Every individual item was flavorful and well-balanced. We will definitely be...

Absolutely fantastic! To start off, our waiter and the other staff showed us wonderful service, pulled out chairs, always refilled drinks before they were empty, and checked in with entertaining small talk! He had great recommendations and helped make every part of dinner go by smoothly and delightfully.

I had the Meze Moon Lamb Shank. Oh! My! Gosh!!!! I moved the bone and the meat literally fell apart because it was so tender and juicy!! It absolutely melted in my mouth with an incredible decadence 🤤🤤! It additionally paired very nicely with the Doogh (mint flavor) that I ordered. I often find the vegetables and rice served at restaurants to be an afterthought but it combined really well with the rest of the dish, I definitely recommend this dish! Their house bread and herb butter was very well done as well, it had a great blend of herbs and the bread was soft and warm!

My partner had the Steak Mediterranean and he really enjoyed it as well, I had a bite and the mushrooms were done really nicely!

At the end of the night we had a sampler platter of the various desserts and each was better than the last, personally my favorites were the Kazandibi (the texture was consistent, well done, and had a nice subtle sweetness that was accompanied by a sweet and light sauce and pistachios) and the pomegranate Turkish Delight (The texture was firm but not unyielding and the floral flavor was everything I wanted from a post meat dessert).

As a side note something I really appreciated was that after we paid the waitstaff did not ignore us. They continued to be kind and make sure we had a good experience, even holding open the door for us on our way out :)

The restaurant was clean and well maintained, as were the bathrooms.

11/10, first thing I did when I got in the car was call my mom and tell her she had to go, so if you are thinking...

This restaurant was well spoken of on Reddit and the reviews below, but I was disappointed.

I believe it is primarily a logistics problem of some sort and not an inherent problem in the menu or ambiance.

I ate there yesterday around 7 pm, Friday night.

First of all, they were out of three or four of the most popular dishes I wanted to try. This made me settle on my fourth (fifth?) choice. I simply don't understand how Friday evening you can be so off on your prep estimates.

Second, only one waitress and who I assume was the owner were working front of the house. They were both very nice and kind, however clearly understaffed and harried. Again, I'm not sure why you would be so short staffed for Friday dinner when people are crowding in. This chaos also may have contributed to a couple of items on my plate being a bit colder than expected.

Third, the plate in the picture was ~$32 before taxes or tips. That's it. (Ignoring complementary bread.) Now, I'm from the Bay, so it's hard to scare me with high prices. However, this was disappointing even by Bay Area standards: I know of excellent Mediterranean places there where you can get more food for similar prices.

Overall, I feel that something is going on where the owner is feeling squeezed by rent or costs or whatever that's forcing them into this situation. I sympathize. I don't underestimate the difficulty of this business. However, other restaurants do deliver more at this price point. And the potential is there: the location, space, and food is fundamentally good.

So the only explanation I can think of is that there is some series of underlying cost structure errors leading to this outcome.

I hope...