Gaby's Mediterranean near Venice and Motor is open LATE (until 1 a.m. daily), so you can actually visit at some ungodly hour -- drunk out of your mind -- and never actually get a good look at what came out of the kitchen. But I'm a photographer, yo, so I'm here at golden hour, for the beautiful afternoon light, just so I can present to you some pictures of the food...

We sat down in the blue covered outdoor patio and our friendly waitress brought us the pita and zaatar. Pita played a big role in our dinner tonight, as you'll see in a little bit. The atmosphere is exactly what I'd expected a Mediterranean place to be, relaxed, breezy, and a little romantic once it got dark and they started bringing out the candles.

For starters I ordered the Mannik, which is the spicy homemade lamb sausage. It's a little dinky, the size of cocktail wieners, but the flavor is strong and distinctive. I'm a huge lamb fan and this was even better than I expected.

I also ordered the Baba Ghannouj, which is very much like hummus, but it's charbroiled eggplant pureed with lemon, garlic, and tahini sauce. This had a distinctive burnt taste to it, which I really liked. We wrapped this in our endless supply of pita and gobbled it up.

For our main course my eating partner ordered the Beef Shawarma, you might have seen this before, this is the giant piece of beef roasting vertically on a skewer, and the chef would cut slices of the tender meat off as it rotates in a semi-enclosed oven. The dinner also came with rice, a fresh and tangy lettuce salad, and a good glob of garlic paste, for the pita, of course. Okay, maybe it's meant to be eaten with the meat, but I was in love with the pita and started dipping it in anything I could find.

I ordered the Kebab Combo, which has the Kafta Kebab, (ground beef formed into a long strip with spices blended in) grilled chicken, and lamb. I remember having kafta before at Javan and it was fantastic, Gaby's version is on the dry side and wasn't as good, but Gaby's made up for it by having very flavorful, tender chicken, and the lamb was also very decent.

For dessert our waitress kindly brought us two items on the house. These are flaky, layered pastries with different fillings. The Baklava, which had ground pistachio, and the Chaniyat, which is filled with Ashta cream. Honey is drizzled on top, it's a little too sweet for me, but that's cause I'm AZN, yo.

Overall the atmosphere is relaxed and casual, the service friendly and very prompt, aided by the fact that we were maybe the 3rd or 4th table there for the night. I enjoyed the food very much, especially the pita and the various things I got to dip it in.

Gaby's Mediterranean Restaurant & Cafe
10445 Venice Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90034
(310) 559-1808

Photos by Kevin Cheng for LAist

LAist also visited Gaby's back in December 2005; check out the great primer on the basic components of Mediterranean cuisine.