The Med opened a couple of months ago in Barton. As the name suggests, it offers modern
mediterranean cuisine like dips and pide, saganaki, marinated sardines, lamb kofte, za’atar fries, and
various items from the oven and grill. We aren’t hungry enough to do the banquet option (at $75 a head), so order a few dishes from the a la carte to share.
The BBQ octopus ($25) with harissa dressing is the only meze plate ordered. It turns out to be my
favourite dish of the night. The octopus is cooked to perfection (no rubbery tentacles here) and is a
more generous meaty portion that expected. It has a beautiful char and smokiness. The harissa
dressing has heat to it and this complements the octopus superbly.
The snapper baked in vine leaves ($32) with chermoula and fennel is soft and cooked well. The
chermoula is slathered on top of the fish before being baked so that it permeates the top of the fish. I
think this is nice but nothing impressive. My friend enjoys this one more than me.
The wagyu beef shashlik with herb yoghurt ($22) isn’t as tender as expected. It’s a bit chewy in fact.
So this is a little disappointing as I’d recently gone to Meat & Wine Co for a lamb skewer (which was
amazing!). Could’ve just been an off day.
We share the heirloom tomatoes with grapes and sumac ($10) which is lovely and light to
balance out the proteins.
If you like baklava, I think you’ll really enjoy the baklava ice cream sundae ($14). So think layers of
crispy baklava between layers of vanilla ice cream. It’s so good and I polish this off by myself.
My friend orders the Malabi custard with lemon sorbet, yoghurt mousse and mango ($14) thinking
it would be custard. Turns out Malabi custard is more of a milk pudding which she wasn’t expecting so take note!
I’m keen to go back and try a few more dishes perhaps with a bigger group of people like the charcoal chicken, and the banquet alternative. Intimate dark atmosphere and nice vibes
inside but it warning it does get extremely loud. There’s outdoor seating as well which is a lot quieter and will be great in summer (there might be some heaters but I can’t remember).
Check out the reel of my experience below
I went back for lunch some weeks later and order the octopus again, the grilled BBQ king prawns (usually only a dinner special) and the lamb kofte kebab with toum and mint. I love all three dishes and seriously there is nothing to fault for this lunch.
The Med
1/1 Burbury Cl, Barton, Canberra
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