BALTIMORE, MD – Everyone loves a small plate of delicious food. Long time Greek-American friends opened up a Cava Mezze in Baltimore, reported the Baltimore Sun. Mezze is not a new concept in the Baltimore dining scene but it is definitely not overplayed, wrote the Sun. Cava Mezze opened in late June in Harbor East. It is “a welcome addition to the city and already feels familiar. Its Greek-inspired small plates are mostly well-conceived and nicely prepared, and service is friendly and knowledgeable, though not perfectly paced.” This is the fourth location for Cava Mezze. The other restaurants are located around the DC area. The owners have national plans for Cava Mezze and her sister Cava Grill.
The Sun reported that the “Baltimore restaurant’s newly built space is loud, dimly lit and modern, with dark fixtures and metal and wood accents. On a recent Monday night, ’90s rap gave the space an upbeat, chatty vibe that felt appropriate for the crowd — couples and small groups of friends, mostly in their 30s — though the space could skew sexier (or younger) with nothing more than a change in music.” Cava Mezze adds a little flair by frying happens tableside; where waiters ignite saganaki and flames shoot into the air. “Flaming dishes are dramatic and fun.” Although Cava Mezze has a solid list of local beers and gamely offers a few Greek beverage selections, the cocktail menu branches out a bit. Some suggestions from the Sun about what to eat: “Groups should consider the dip sampler, which includes small scoops of Cava Mezze’s five dips, served with pita triangles. Tzatziki, hummus and roasted eggplant spreads, all well-seasoned, were familiar takes on the classic Greek dips. Taramosalata, is a bright pink spread made with salmon roe, was subtly fishy and dressed up with truffle oil and a sprinkling of salty caviar. Our favorite of the dips was the “crazy” feta. It is Whipped and infused with jalapeno, the feta was spicy, salty and very likable.”
And for dessert: “Challah bread French toast served with berries, and loukoumades, fried doughnuts drizzled with honey and sprinkled with chopped walnuts. Both were fluffy and sweet but not too sugary. The loukoumades were better – crispier on the outside and more interesting all around.”
PITTSBURGH, PA – This week writer Gabe Rosenberg wrote an article on Carrie Weaver, a lecturer and recent Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. Weaver analyzed 258 burials and skeletons from the Passo Marinaro necropolis in Kamarina, which were excavated in the 1980s by Italian archaeologist Giovanni Di Stefano but never analyzed. Rosenberg says, “Sometime between 500 B.C. and 200 B.C., residents of the Greek colony of Kamarina in Sicily dug two graves for two bodies. They pinned down each body with large rocks or pottery; if the bodies awoke from the dead, they could not escape. Reanimated corpses did not, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, ravage the Greek Empire then, but ancient Greeks certainly believed they could. Instances of both necrophobia (fear of the dead) and necromancy (the practice of communicating with the dead) are common in ancient Greek culture, and are the focus of new research by Weaver.”
Rosenberg laughably says that “The zombies of Ancient Greece would put the zombies of American pop culture to shame — if only because they were really, truly feared.” Weaver, a classical archaeologist who specializes in human osteology and funerary archaeology, was working in Sicily when she found these skeletons had been left unexamined in a museum. Two burials stood out to her. Weaver said that, “Any time that a body is buried differently from the rest of the members of the cemetery, it’s termed a deviant burial,” the Gazette reported. Weaver found that ancient Greeks belief in the supernatural extended to convictions that certain individuals were predisposed, predestined or compelled to become “revenants,” or the undead. “Illegitimate offspring, victims of suicide, mothers who died in childbirth and victims of murder, drowning, stroke or plague could all become revenants. Improper treatment of a body, such as not providing proper burial rites or allowing animals or insects to leap or fly over a body, could cause it to transform.” Weaver’s examination of the Kamarina cemetery will appear in her book, “The Bioarchaeology of Classical Kamarina: Life and Death in Greek Sicily.”
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