MoralEats: Dalia’s Mediterranean Restaurant

Dalia’s Mediterranean Restaurant
1220 Fairport Rd
Rochester, NY 14450

Dalia’s opened just last September, but it flew under my radar (and the Morales’ extradimensional sensory organs) for a while, probably because it’s tucked away in a little plaza between Abbott’s and Island Valley Golf Course.

That was a real mistake, because this place can compete with whatever your neighborhood Mediterranean joint is. Let’s discuss the meal the Morales forced me to buy suggested I get for the two of us, starting with the appetizers.

 

The falafel you see above is an excellent introduction to Dalia’s style. It’s unassumingly and refreshingly honest; the seasoning is strong on herbs but otherwise subtle; and it’s usually accompanied by a bomb dressing. Here, the tahini makes a perfect complement to meaty chickpea mash, fried until it’s got just enough crunch to be worth eating. It even has that tiny hint of bitterness that reminds you chickpeas aren’t candy.

Now, the Morales eats around the total GDP of Burkina Faso in spanakopita each year. That’s currently about $11.58 billion, an amount of spanakopita that, apparently, also covers the surface area of Burkina Faso if laid out in a single sheet. If the spanakopita’s like Dalia’s, this is not a habit the Morales is going to break.

Again, it’s a basic spanakopita: you put spinach, garlic, and some seasoning in phyllo and you bake it until it’s approximately the color of John Boehner. But Dalia’s does this simple dish really well: the spinach isn’t soggy or leafy, but baked into a proper, meaty, filling pie.

But this is all a prelude to the real meal. Full disclosure: I have a history of getting upstaged at Greek places. I’ll be that guy who decides to test a place out by getting some of their fried calamari or their mousaka, and the person next to me will always order something simpler that ends up making me look like a clown.

Not this time. Not at Dalia’s. I knew exactly what my dish-of-proof would be.

That is a big honking chicken plate, chock-full of lettuce, kalamata olives, feta, sautéed mushrooms, pita, Greek dressing (which, as far as I could tell, was basically a really good mix of olive oil, vinegar, lemon juice and herbs) and tomatoes, which are very good for you when used to develop the kind of discernment that ends in you throwing them down your garbage disposal.

Sorry – there’s no plot twist to be had, unless the fact that this is probably the best part of a Dalia’s meal is a surprise to you. The salad ingredients (including the devil fruit) are always fresh and complement the simple dressing with a variety of tastes, from the salty and slightly briney feta to the earthy mushrooms.

And then there’s the chicken, which blows the whole game wide open. It’s a beaut: it shreds like Carlos Santana, it’s just charred enough to impart smokiness to the flesh, and when you bite into the white meat on the inside, what you get is, again, subtly seasoned, carefully done food. It makes the salad work.

Some people save a stomach for dessert. The Morales saves three. (Only one of them handles chocolate well, and it uses all three for cheesecake. Go figure.) Which is why no meal at Dalia’s is complete without this.

Now, I’ll take a wild guess that you’ve seen baklava before, and probably even had some, because, well, you’re almost certainly from Rochester. (This isn’t some listicle about senior pranks, after all.) If you’ve been reading, you probably know what I’m about to say.

Yes, the baklava is basically exactly what you’d expect. Yes, it’s very well done. And, maybe best of all, at Dalia’s it comes in two kinds – pistachio, which the Morales insists on and wolfs down without giving me a bite, and walnut, which I guess, by default, is my favorite. (In case you’re wondering, Stomach #2 is for walnuts and pistachios, so it has to pick one.)

I think I’ve made my point. You’d never think to stop at this place – if you’re driving by, it’s awfully hard to see the sign – but it absolutely deserves your business. Stop by. Get yourself some chicken. Enjoy. Stop by again. Get yourself some more chicken. Enjoy again.

And if you see me in there . . . well, you’re probably not getting spanakopita that day.