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Oasis Restaurant: A Mediterranean refuge

Oasis restaurant's focus is on fresh ingredients and vibrant flavors

By Clinton H. Comley Contributing Restaurant Critic

When most people hear the word oasis, visions of a cool spring shaded by palm trees in the midst of a desert come to mind. When thinking of Oasis Restaurant in Chevy Chase, I prefer an alternative definition: something serving as a refuge or pleasant change from the usual. Specializing in eastern Mediterranean cuisine, Oasis Restaurant is a lovely change from the ordinary, offering light fare with the fresh and vibrant flavors and ingredients that make Mediterranean food so refreshing and unique.

Oasis has only about 15 or so tables, and on the Friday night that our party of five visited, we were able to walk in and sit down immediately. This was the first visit for all five of us, so we started with the two appetizers named for the place: the Oasis sampler and the Oasis dip.

The dip was baked eggplant mixed with fresh herbs, vegetables, lemon juice and olive oil, coarsely pureed and served with pita. It was tasty, although it was not hurt by the addition of a little salt from our table.

The sampler contained everything that you could want from Mediterranean cuisine: hummus, baba ghanouj, falafel, stuffed grape leaves and tabouli. From the sampler, all but one item were all refreshing and tasty; the falafel was a little bland and dry. The hummus had just the right amounts of olive oil and lemon juice and was creamy enough to allow my 8-month-old daughter to taste and give her opinion. She did not make a funny face, so we assumed she enjoyed it as much as we did.

The tabouli, one of my favorite Mediterranean dishes, is everything that region's cuisine stands for -- a mix of simple and fresh ingredients; nothing more, nothing less. Oasis' tabouli was a perfect blend of fresh parsley and mint, onions, tomatoes, couscous, lemon juice and olive oil.

For our entrees, we stayed with samplers, in a sense. My wife and I split the Oasis Platter for two, and our friends chose the mixed grill, shawarma mix and the "Oasis Dish." When our food was served, we realized why our server was acting funny at the reality of five entrees being ordered. Each was large enough to feed two except for our Oasis platter, which easily could feed three to four.

The Oasis Dish -- chunks of meat cooked in tomato sauce and mixed with eggplant, chickpeas, celery, green peppers, onions and spices -- was sweet and tasty, a bit of a Mediterranean-style stew over rice.

An item central to Mediterranean cuisine is the kabob, which we sampled heavily. On our platter were three kabobs -- one chicken, one beef and one kafta skewer, ground meat mixed with onions, herbs and seasonings, skewered and grilled -- plus chicken and beef shawarma and another small sampling of the appetizers we had on the sampler platter. Had we thought about this before ordering the platter, the sampler appetizer would not have been necessary.

Of the kabobs, the chicken was the resounding favorite in the group -- tender, tart, juicy chunks of chicken dipped in the accompanying garlic sauce drew rave reviews from all of us. The kafta was a little dry, but the slightly tangy flavor was spot-on.

As for the shawarma, meat cooked on a rotisserie and then shaved, both the chicken and beef were a little dry and possibly overcooked, but they retained the flavor of the tart marinade that Oasis apparently uses in many of the dishes we sampled.

Add all of these together and pile it on top of rice, and we had plenty of fresh and tasty food to take home for another time.

Oasis is a welcome change from the ordinary and is a nice spot to visit, especially during the summer months of plentiful fresh herbs and vegetables. Unfortunately, Oasis is currently closed for vacation, but it will reopen Aug. 3. It's worth the wait.

Dinner (and lots of leftovers) for five with tax but not tip was $90.

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RESTAURANT REVIEW

Oasis Restaurant

Address: 837 Chevy Chase Place.

Hours: Closed for vacation until Aug. 3. Regular hours: 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Mon.-Sat. (buffet available 11 a.m.-3 p.m.).

Phone: 859-269-6440.

Online: www.oasisrestaurant.net.

Other: All major credit cards. No bar. Handicapped accessible. Vegetarian entrees.