Eastern Mediterranean
http://www.peranyc.com/soho/index.html
54 Thompson St. – Soho

Pera’s original location is in Midtown, but they recently expanded to a Soho location.  They are known for their signature mezes, or specialty cuts of grilled marinated meats and seafood with sides.  All meats are grilled on a 10′ open fire grill.

Every summer we seek outdoor dining spaces. This year, this newbie in Soho immediately landed on our weekend afternoon list.   It is located at the corner if Thompson & Broome next to the Thompson Hotel.   Both the outdoor garden space and the indoor bar/dining areas are stunning.  Pera’s inside dining room was deserted on this gorgeous day, so I got some great empty space shots.

We had no trouble booking a reservation, but we arrived to find it was filling up quickly with a late afternoon brunch crowd.  Steve ordered the sangria and I had a Syrah Rose.   We chose a spot on the  deck overlooking the crowd and in full sun. We watched more people come in and the staff struggle.

We both ordered the ‘Gazpacho of the Day’ which, as the waiter said, is gazpacho. The same one as last week. It was, in fact, Classic gazpacho and quite a good one at that. The bowl was gigantic and we were worried we’d be too full to eat our lunch.  The servers sloshed the gazpacho up the sides of the gorgeous white bowl, so I had to crop it out.

Steve’s sangria was a bit heavy on fruit and light on wine, but it turned out he apparently got the bottom of the barrel. We heard two girls complain they’d been there an hour and fifteen minutes and were still waiting for a sangria. Exaggeration, by the way, as we weren’t even there for that long and they came well after we did!

Our meals came out looking great and they were tasty as well, however, the portions were pretty lame. Steve ordered the Pera Salad, which was pretty but nothing more than a pile of parsley. I had a sliced lamb sandwich on a baguette with dill yoghurt sauce.   Woops, nearly no lamb!

Pera Soho Salad of Cucumbers, Tomatoes, Onion, Parsley, Walnuts, with Goat Cheese · 14

Marinated Sliced Lamb with Mint and Dill Yoghurt, served on Baguette · 18

The house made chips were damn good…

This is still a gorgeous spot and nothing was actually bad. But expect to pay for the environment. It is an awesome spot for cocktails and probably a bunch of Mediterranean apps.  We are by no means giving up on this one. We hope by next weekend they’ll start staffing up for the weather.