The joy of eating

As soon as students step foot on campus, Avocado Cafe and its delivery-food rivals make it their mission to litter the school with menus. New to Georgetown, Eat & Joy hasn’t missed out on the race to inundate the lobby of New South with its pamphlets, calling out to Leo’s-weary freshmen who need to stock up on CampusFood.com points.
Though the pan-Mediterranean eatery sits conveniently off M Street on 34th, students should take advantage of its take-out option. The restaurant itself is sparse, with several wobbly steel tables scattered about the floor. And unless Eat & Joy attracts more sit-down diners, expect to stare awkwardly at the plastic gerbera daisies on your table as pick-up customers pass in and out.
Sitting down at the restaurant won’t shave time off of your wait either. Students looking for fast—and far cheaper—Mediterranean food should stick to Quick Pita.
Yet despite these flaws, Eat & Joy offers a menu full of the best dishes in Mediterranean cuisine. The cacik dip, made with yogurt, cucumbers and olive oil, serves as a refreshing pair to the smoky babaghannoush. Warm pita bread comes with most appetizers, which are priced around five dollars.
It’s not all Mediterranean, though—the menu is littered with standard American fare. Buffalo wings oddly appear next to the falafel plate and Turkish ezme. Pizza and calzones, ranch dressing, and BBQ chicken crowd up Eat & Joy offerings, adding a bizarre character to the menu as a whole. Next to the restaurant’s oven specials, the pizzas are decent, but unmemorable. Most popular are Eat & Joy’s Turkish-style “pizzas,” called pides, which are cooked up in a brick oven and filled with delicious blends of vegetables, spices and meats.
The spinach pide pairs feta with kaser cheese, and the two are blended together with olives. Its crust is somewhere between Eat & Joy’s pita and its pizza dough, and it holds up well to the filling, thickly spread blends.
The main dishes offer overcompensating portions of basmati rice and salad, but the baklava is worth saving room for. Though small, Eat & Joy’s sticky desserts are crispy, fresh, and well worth the three-fifty price.
Its take-out menu features coupons for pizzas and wings, but if you decide to order Eat & Joy, do it right and go with the Mediterranean options. You already eat enough pizza from Tuscany anyway.