There are restaurants you visit, and restaurants you return to. Mediterranean Kitchen in Kirkland, Washington, belongs firmly in the second category — a Lebanese-Mediterranean spot where the food is so precisely what you want that you're already planning your next visit on the drive home.
Start with the baba ganouj. Smoky, silky, and impossibly light, it arrives crowned with olive oil and a generous dusting of sumac — the earthy, citrus-tanged spice that is the quiet signature of everything on this menu. The eggplant is charred deeply enough to carry real smokiness without bitterness. It is, without exaggeration, the finest baba ganouj I have ever tasted, and it alone is worth the trip from anywhere on the Eastside.
The kitchen's cooking philosophy runs on three pillars: garlic, lemon, and sumac. These aren't subtle background notes — they're front and center on every plate. The toum (garlic sauce) is whipped to an airy white cloud with real bite, and lemon lifts every dish from rich to bright. Sumac shows up everywhere, lending its distinctive tartness like a finishing brushstroke that pulls the whole plate together.
The shawarma — available in both lamb and beef — is the kind you think about for days afterward. The meat is deeply seasoned and tender, shaved in thin layers that carry just enough char at the edges, served with garlicky toum and that ever-present sumac. But the dish that catches you off guard is the Farmer's Dish: chicken wings braised in a creamy, lemony sumac sauce that is somehow both comforting and electric. It's a Lebanese folk dish, unpretentious and rustic, and it might be the most soulful thing on the menu.
Mediterranean Kitchen deserves to be packed every night. The flavors are bold and unapologetic, the cooking is done with genuine care, and the baba ganouj will ruin you for all others forever. Go soon, bring people you love, and order everything.
