Price: $$$
Service: Outstanding
Cuisine: French
When I want a light lunch or dinner or even breakfast, I think of one place: Meli Melo. Meli Melo always has great service, great food, and a great atmosphere. Seated right on the bottom of Greenwich Avenue, one can spot the lemon drop colored doors and wafting aroma of fresh sugar crepes a block away. Having recently just expanded their doors to the storefront over, the restaurant, once cramped but loved for its quaint quarters, now, still maintaining that itty bitty French cafe feel, welcomes customers to a more open array of seating. Something I love about the new space is the light; there is plenty of it and most of it is natural sunlight that filters through the floor to ceiling glass doors that remain open on sunny warm days, giving customers the chance to people watch and enjoy the fresh air and passerby-ers something to be jealous of.
The menu consists of fresh squeezed juices, salads, soups, crepes, sandwiches, dessert crepes, and fresh house-made sorbets and ice creams. Meli Melo's freshly squeezed orange juice is the perfect morning pick-me-up and their raspberry, peach, strawberry blend makes the best afternoon snack. The salads are fresh, large, and light and feature extremely good dressing. Salads range from the vegetarian, (my favorite) which is a bed of mixed greens with bean sprouts, tomatoes, scallions, avocado, artichoke hearts, and asparagus in their house vinaigrette, to the incredible chicken curry salad, to a hearty cobb featuring toppers such as eggs, tomatoes, blue cheese crumbles, bacon, and house cut turkey...mmmm.
As I mentioned in previous posts, I'm a soup fanatic and this is part of the reason I'm obsessed with this restaurant. Every day they feature a full selection of home made soups that are so tasty and just so perfect. While the french onion, with a warming and comfy broth, chunks of heavenly baguette, caramelized onions to perfection, topped with an oozing gruyere cheese burnt in just the right places, remains a staple, all the other soups change daily. Artichoke soup, gazpacho, butternut squash with roasted apples, white bean, lentil, vegetable, beef barley, avocado with crab, are just a few I can spit off the top of my head that have graced the menu and my personal palette and are all well deserving to be on the menu. The butternut squash is sipping heaven. A thick buttery broth that has a color that reminds me of gold, butter, and the sun, (all things good in the world) boasts a rich squash flavor that is carefully balanced with cinnamon, nutmeg, and the crunch of sweet roasted apples. Served with a slice of a french baguette and you can now officially rest in peace. In the winter, I live off of Meli Melo soup takeout.
If you're feeling the sandwich route, I recommend the Le Parisien: A baguette with butter, spicy mustard, gherkin pickles, some greens, ham, and I like to add avocado. Its light, yet filling, and leaves you feeling like you can do something after you eat it, not like you need to take a nap and curl up in a ball.
You can put any salad on top of a crepe but why do that when you can make a delicious melted crepe yourself? Take a buckwheat crepe, throw in sundried tomatoes, bean sprouts, portabellos, swiss cheese, scallions, and artichoke hearts, and I am one happy camper.
Desserts: Banana nutella crepe is a STAR. Gooey nutella gushes out of every corner and fold of the sweet crepe as you tackle each banana trying to make the ideal bite. The sorbets are clean, crisp, and tasty and while hosting many original classics like raspberry and mango, they also have started featuring interesting ones like goat cheese.
Basically, I love this place. Love everything in it.
Being Hungree is a way of life
xo
hungree girl.
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