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Dining Out / A fine Turkish find By Daniel Rogov Tags: food As hard as chefs and restaurateurs may try, Tel Aviv's Yad Harutzim Street has never become one of the "in" areas for dining. Despite the obvious and well-earned success of Coffee Bar, so many restaurants have opened and closed with such frequency that it has been dangerous for restaurant critics to visit them - the restaurant could close its doors before the review was even published. So it has been, for example at #13, a location at which four restaurants have risen and fallen, Pacific, Peking, Sender and Divraia Ha Yim. None of these restaurants had anything in common besides the fact that they could not attract or maintain a large clientele. Now under new ownership, Maia has a new chef and is completely redesigned. All is sparkling new in the restaurant except for the well-worn wood floor. Advertisement An attractive beige and black bar-restaurant, offering cuisine that falls somewhere between Turkey and Greece, Maia features a long bar as well as many simple but attractive tables. The intentionally muted lighting adds to the charm of the place, but the long glass wall that looks out on the unattractive street would profit from drapes. I do wonder just who wants to watch the continuous fashion show that appears on the two plasma screens, one at each end of the long dining area. Even before receiving a menu, I was greeted with a refreshing house cocktail: gin, spices and grapefruit juice in a small glass. This was followed by the thick and flavorful house focaccia that had a fine, crisp crust. In addition to butter, the bread was served with two spreads, both of which put me in a good mood. The first was a red pepper and garlic concoction with just the right hint of heat to make it tempting. The second was a creamy feta and blue cheese mixture that went very nicely with our first glasses of red wine. The menu is somewhat eclectic, offering dishes that fall between Turkey, Greece and Italy. I decided to stay on the Turkish side. Pizza meets pomegranates The first starter we tried was a Turkish bureka, filled with chopped spinach and good goat's cheese and topped with a poached egg. The dish was said to come with a Hollandaise sauce but the sauce that actually accompanied it, a creamy mustard sauce was actually a fine match and the dish was delicious. Served piping hot, just salty enough and full of flavor, the bureka literally melted in the mouth. If there was a fault, it was a minor one: The yolk of the egg was too hard and should have been runny. From here we went on to another Turkish dish - a lahmacun, a thick-crusted pizza-like offering in which the dough is topped with a mixture of finely-chopped beef, sprinkled over generously with toasted pine nuts and a pomegranate sauce. Cut conveniently into four generous wedges that could be picked up and eaten plain or served with the tehina sauce that accompanied the dish, the dish was simple but a treat, bursting with flavor, the sweet and sour notes of the pomegranates nicely complementing the flavor of the beef. We continued on to a single entree, "a variation on lamb" which included two baby lamb chops, two kebabs and two burekas - plenty for two to share after the generous appetizers. The grilled lamb chops, just fatty and meaty enough, were delicious and the kebabs were large, plump and just dense enough. The ground lamb was mixed together with finely-chopped pistachios and spices, making them a treat even without a sauce. The burekas were very dense - the rich flavors of the lamb were mixed together with fresh, finely chopped mint, parsley and coriander. The platter was accompanied by what our waitress told us would be a fairly hot onion sauce. The sauce was excellent, especially when spread on the burekas but it was more sweet than hot. Pistachio confections We went on to two desserts. The first was a traditional Turkish offering of a coffee cream with a dark chocolate crust, filled with a light, almost liquid, coffee- and chocolate-flavored filling; the whole thing was topped with whole pistachios. In the center of the plate was a scoop of pistachio-flavored ice cream topped with a few strands of kadaif pastry on it. The chocolate was rich, the ice cream excellent and the combination most pleasant. From there we went on to sample a dish of mahlabi, which was every bit as delicious and refreshing as the ones you buy from the vendors at the entrance to Jerusalem's Old City. Topped with a simple but absolutely delicious raspberry sauce, the dish was irresistibly good and was the ideal complement to the espressos with which we closed our meal. During recent decades, the attempts in Israel to upgrade Turkish cookery from street food to fine dining have not really succeeded. The failure, for example, the Tel Aviv branch of Tike, a fine Turkish restaurant testifies that in Israel many consider this the kind of food that one consumes in cheap diners. All of which is a pity because Turkish cuisine is a rich and diverse cuisine and in Maia the food is prepared well, the service is good and the prices are reasonable. Our bill for two came to NIS 230 to which glasses of the Alamos Malbec of Argentina's Catina Zapata added NIS 33 each. Well worth the visit. Maia: 13 Yad Harutzim Street, Tel Aviv. Open daily 12 P.M.-2 A.M. Tel: (03) 635-5355. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Carter's contacts Report: Ex-U.S. president Carter to meet with Hamas leader in Syria. 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