Mediterraneo

by Orson Scott Card

August 28, 2008

Speaking of Italian food, I can't tell you how happy I am that at The Village at North Elm they've opened a little neighborhood Italian restaurant called Mediterraneo.

We went there with an odd combination of high hopes and low expectations. The high hopes won. With six outdoor tables and seven indoors, I don't know how they're going to handle inclement weather. As it is, they're having a terrible problem with the bees that seem to be infesting Greensboro. (I don't remember ever having bees cluster around the entrances of grocery stores, for instance. I'm sure global warming is causing it.)

I had my suspicions when I looked at the deceptively unpretentious menu and the folksy service. But so far, almost everything we've ordered has been first rate. (My wife was disappointed with the falafel, but then, that's not Italian, is it?)

Their caprese salad (tomato, basil, fresh mozzarella) can hold its own with any in town, and their hummus is, as of this moment, our favorite (something happened to Southern Lights' hummus recipe lately, to our sorrow).

The entrees are even better. For instance, their lobster ravioli is almost as good as the lobster turtei at Il Fornaio in Beverly Hills, and that's saying something. They don't get them in frozen packages, either. The raviolis are made there in their kitchen. The lobster filling is good, but (of course) it's the sauce that made me wish I had enough room to sop it all up with bread and finish it off.

I tormented myself about whether to write this review. If you believe me and try it out, I'll probably have trouble getting a table for all the crowds who'll come back again and again. But if I don't write about it, something worse could happen – maybe enough people won't discover it, and then it will close, and frankly, I'd rather have trouble getting a table than have the restaurant go away.

So if you live anywhere near North Elm and Pisgah Church, try it out and see if I'm not right. The restaurant is at the extreme southeast corner of the new Village at North Elm development, so if you turn in from Pisgah Church at the new light and go all the way to the back, you can probably park right at the very sidewalk where you'll be eating!

Oh, and the prices – very reasonable for the quality you get.