Here’s a most peculiar story about a restaurant that I had somehow visited twice before, when it was chocolate and when it was peanut butter, but never when it was a Reese’s treat. Melody Lane is the new incarnation of two prior ventures, one of which excited me, but I thought, wrongly, that it had vanished.

When I first moved to Marietta in 2003, I drove north on Canton Road and spotted Melody Lane Deli on my right. I stopped in for a sandwich and found it really unimpressive. It was mainly a breakfast place; making lunch sandwiches seemed like an afterthought. I didn’t give it any more consideration; life’s too short for unimpressive food.

Years passed, and David took the kids and me to this little Mediterranean grocery, located just a hair north of Melody Lane, but on the left, where they were serving up gyros and falafels to guests at a teeny little counter with four bar stools. They told us then that they would soon be moving, probably to the strip mall across the street. I said that I’d look out for them, particularly as they sold cans of Vimto, one of many soft drinks that I like but rarely find. In time, though, the grocery store closed and nothing new opened in that strip mall.

More years passed – I really have lived here too long – and I followed a recommendation from a new food blogger in the area, A Girl and Her Words…, to give Melody Lane a try. She raved about the excellent Mediterranean food available here. “Wait a minute,” I thought. “Is that really that crummy breakfast place?” By this time, I’d forgotten all about that grocery store, and didn’t realize what had happened until I spoke with our server after Marie and I had a childfree supper to celebrate our anniversary a little early. The grocery store had moved across the street by buying the restaurant!

The evening was memorable for one thing even above the food: this was the first time that we left the baby with his two older siblings for a couple of hours. Marie and I were probably just a little distracted, and waiting nervously for one of our cell phones to ring with a crisis.

We started with an order of baba ghanoush, a dish that I like at some places a lot more than others. This was one of the good ones. It was really creamy and lip-smackingly tasty. I followed that with a tabouli salad for myself. This, sadly, wasn’t the best I’d ever had. I liked the tabouli at a place a little south that has since closed a lot more.

Marie had the chicken shawarma and just loved it. The meat is broiled and seasoned with tahini sauce, parsley and garlic. By comparison, my kafta – ground beef and onions with parsley – didn’t come close. It was very good, but the chicken was just so wonderful that I got menu envy again.

This was an inexpensive and simple way to celebrate our anniversary, but we were kind of keeping things as simple as possible over the course of May as we got used to having the baby around. Now that we know about Melody Lane, I hope we’ll revisit it soon. I want an order of that shawarma chicken to myself, to be honest.

We’re taking a longer-than-normal break, but we’ll be back on Monday. Have a great weekend!

Last week, it was Marie’s turn to pick a place for one of our weekly get-togethers, and she found a little restaurant in the shadow of Marietta’s infamous Big Chicken which people probably drive right past without blinking. It’s called Shish Kebab and it’s set up in what looks like an old Pizza Hut or some other ’70s-fashioned place. You see a lot of this in the area; one of these days I need to go back to Don Taco, which is a very good Mexican restaurant built into an old Hardee’s*.

David and Neal got to Shish Kebab before us. I had funny work stories to share and my daughter was impressing us by being awesomely eighties, and we settled in for some very good meals.

It’s not mentioned on the menu, but it looks like all dinner guests here get a small tossed salad. Had I known that, I probably would not have also asked for a Shirazi salad. This was a blend of diced tomatoes, cucumbers and onions with olives and lemon juice. David had an appetizer called kashk-o-badmjan, which was eggplant and mint with dried yogurt, along with a small order of seven spices, which was a cup of pickled vegetables served with a very tasty blend of spices, by design so strong that the taste of the spices overpowered the vegetables.

David and my daughter each ordered chicken barg. Asked for the difference between a basic kebab and a barg, the owner explained that they were different cuts of meat, prepared in a different marinade. They also got a slightly different selection of vegetables; Marie and Neal each had kebabs – lamb and beef – and theirs did not come with mushrooms. I happily ate up my daughter’s. They were prepared in a wonderful blend of oils that brought out so much flavor; I could eat those with every meal.

As for me, I was really only peckish enough for a sandwich, and so I had a gyro. It was very good, and really, the only step this place did wrong this evening was to serve it with a bag of Frito-Lay chips. They’ve done such a good job turning this restaurant’s interior into something fairly classy and nice, and they serve such good food and present it so well, and then they give you bags of Frito-Lay? Well, the gyro meat was very good, and supplemented with some of Marie’s excellent lamb and my daughter’s mushrooms, I was very happy with my supper.

We were invited to return for their big Saturday supper shindig, but we had plans already. That said, the prospect of a buffet with food this good and the entertainment of belly dancing really did sound tempting! Hopefully it was a big success for them and they’ll host these more often.

*Or not. Don Taco apparently closed several months ago.

Follow Marie Let’s Eat! on Twitter!