The new owners of Laziza have added unique and approachable items to an already popular menu, like a Mediterranean Chicken Sandwich with harissa oleo, and they’ve started serving Sunday brunch, twisting familiar favorites into modern Mediterranean recipes.
In September 2024, former owners of Kent-based Laziza Mediterranean restaurant, Mike and Nicole Awad, decided to retire. They sold their restaurant, located at 195 E. Erie St., to husband and wife duo Ryan Metcalf and Cassandra Frantz, who moved to Kent from northern California late last fall, after searching for a family-friendly location to raise their three children, Vaughn, 11, Noemi, 9, and Shay, 4. Along with Kent’s charm, the opportunity to buy Laziza is what finalized their decision to put down roots in the area.
Ryan Metcalf, Shay, Vaughn, Cassandra Franz and Noemi. [submitted photo]
Metcalf is originally from Michigan and Frantz from Illinois. The two had lived in Walnut Creek, California for about 10 years, where Metcalf managed Boudin Bakery and Café at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco.
Metcalf and Frantz’s passion for Mediterranean cuisine started long before they bought Laziza. Years ago, Frantz was formally introduced to authentic Mediterranean fare while visiting France, Spain and Greece. Later, back in the States, she worked with renowned chef and restaurateur, Marc Vetri, at Amis Trattoria, a restaurant in Philadelphia known for its Roman-style Italian cuisine.
Then, 10 years ago, Metcalf and Frantz spent a month in Morocco, where they sampled food from Marrekesh, Casablanca and Essaouira, a trip that further drove their interest in Mediterranean cuisine. Frantz began experimenting with – and creating her own – recipes from various regions throughout the Mediterranean. Now, the couple’s passion for food and hospitality can be experienced through Laziza.
“At Laziza, we take the timeless traditions of Mediterranean cuisine and reimagine them with modern and playful twists. Our menu celebrates the rich flavors of the countries around the Mediterranean basin — from Greece and Italy to the Middle East, Spain, France and more — while blending in contemporary techniques and global influences to create bold, memorable dishes,” Frantz said.
The Awads opened Laziza 12 years ago as a Middle Eastern restaurant, but throughout the years, they broadened the menu to include cuisine from all over the Mediterranean. The idea of owning a restaurant that embraced Middle Eastern cuisine, as well as cuisine inspired by recipes from other countries in the Mediterranean region, appealed to Metcalf and Frantz, as did the Kent area.
“We like to take inspiration from cuisines all over the Mediterranean to design delicious, interesting, compelling food. So, that was a big draw for us,” Metcalf said. “And then the community itself: we really love Kent. I’ve felt welcome from the moment I got here. Everybody that I have met has been friendly and accommodating. It’s very different from California. California is great, a beautiful state, but just the attention to family and community here is something that really drew us in.”
Line Cook Fito Reyes rolls vegetarian dawali (rolled grape leaves). “One thing is, it can be labour intensive, but it’s fun at the same time,” Reyes said. Jeremy Brown/The Portager
It’s not just the ownership that changed at Laziza. The couple has updated the menu and added new handcrafted dishes in an effort to not only expand the dishes and flavor profiles that the elegant eatery offers, but also to cater to the casual diner who may want to pop in for a quicker burger, or sit at the bar for a beer and some za’atar popcorn (that’s a Middle Eastern snack made with seasoned popcorn and parmesan cheese that Frantz calls “dangerously delicious.”)
The menu still includes Middle Eastern mainstays, like hummus, falafel and baba ghanoush, but Metcalf and Frantz have created their own dishes by combining familiar ingredients that represent a broader reach of the Mediterranean region, like a shawarma melt that uses country sourdough bread from Brimfield Bakery with Turkish harissa cheese sauce.
“I think that, a lot of times, when people think Mediterranean, they think Middle Eastern, but there are only, actually, a couple Middle Eastern countries that are right there in the Mediterranean. The rest is food that you recognize from Greece, from Spain and from France, and even though you have those great differences in culinary styles, you still have a lot of essential themes, and that’s what we’re focusing on,” Frantz said.
One ingredient that is used regularly throughout the Mediterranean are pine nuts, known for their rich, buttery flavor. Laziza commixes this versatile nut in their hand-crafted gremolata as a topping for their vegan cauliflower steak dish.
Sunday brunch is fairly new to Laziza, having only been offered for about 3 months. Metcalf and Frantz worked with Laziza chefs for months to create a brunch menu that resonated with customers.
“When we put together the brunch menu, it was so enjoyable, because our staff loved it every day they came in. We were all sitting around talking about, how do we make this something else,” Frantz said. “We have a lot of harissa and sumac and all of these different spices that you see in the Mediterranean. The individual components are something special and unique, but put together, it’s really recognizable. And that’s what we wanted brunch to feel like: what you’re going to get if you go to your grandma’s house and you have these delicious wonderful dishes, but they’re elevated a little bit. They’re beautiful. They’re really pretty and thoughtful in how we’re constructing them, and there’s layers of flavor.”
A capstone of the culinary team’s brunch creations is their baklava pancakes. They started with a favorite American dish – pancakes – and merged it with the essence of baklava.
“What we did was we actually spiced the pancakes themselves, so they are really flavorful, and then we made a from-scratch honey syrup that goes on top,” Frantz said. “To get the crunch in there, we took kataifi, which is a phyllo dough – it’s used in a lot of dishes around the Mediterranean – and we fry it. That goes on top, and the whole thing is dusted with pistachios and rose petals with butter and the orange honey syrup on the top. So you get all of those things you get in baklava. You get crunch. You get the layers. You get the sweetness. You get the spice. You get the nuts. But it’s a totally different dish.”
Baklava Pancakes. [submitted photo]
Of course, French toast is also on the brunch menu. The dish consists of battered and fried toast topped with Laziza’s own whipped honey sea salt labneh and blueberry compote. Labneh is derived from straining yoghurt to remove the whey, resulting in a rich, creamy spread similar to cream cheese. The dish then gets grilled peaches.
Frantz learned that cherries are a widely used fruit throughout the Mediterranean region, so she created a jam for the brunch menu.
“We have a cherry vanilla jam that I’m really proud of that is delicious,” she said. “We were thinking, what are the fruits that you see over and over in the Mediterranean, regardless of what country you’re in, like cherries, apricots, persimmons, pomegranates, you know. So we started working with the cherry, and I was able to come up with the cherry vanilla jam that’s just outstanding.”
Metcalf and Frantz are focused on sourcing ingredients locally as much as possible and handmaking nearly everything in-house.
“One of the things that we’re doing that is pretty unusual in this day and age is we are making absolutely everything in-house, from scratch, and that goes all the way from our French fries – they’re slicing potatoes every single day – our hummus, to all of our brunch ingredients, it’s all done by us,” Frantz said. “Making sure everything is handmade and great every day is important to us. Our desserts, our cocktails, we’re doing all of that. For our cocktails, we make all of our syrups in-house from scratch. Even the garnishes, and things like that. I think that makes a difference in the final product.”
Laziza’s upstairs dinner room that is also used as a banquet room for special occasions and catered events. [submitted photo]
In the kitchen, head chef Cole Macken and sous chef Josh Hopkins work with a skilled team to make Laziza’s imaginative dishes something that customers will enjoy.
Braised Short Rib Dinner. [submitted photo]
“I think it’s how we elaborate on the authentic-style dishes and everything is as fresh as possible,” Hopkins said. “It’s not just Lebanese. We take a Lebanese dish, and then take components from Italy or Greece, and blend this dish with that. It’s not all the same cookie-cutter restaurant stuff. It’s more like a sit-down and you can be excited about the food when you come in. We roll our own grape leaves. We’re making our pasta in-house. We’re making our labneh. We’re making ricotta, farmers cheese.”
Frantz said the menu evolves as the team creates new dishes, but it can also change depending upon the season, and sometimes upon what their supplier has in stock.
At the moment, the menu includes a braised short rib dish. They’ve added a touch of cinnamon to the braise, which is a key ingredient in Moroccan braise and adds a fragrant depth to the dish.
The menu offers several main courses, from beef kabobs to surf and turf to pan-seared salmon to chicken alfredo Laziza style. For appetizers, tahini-drizzled crispy cauliflower, Mediterranean pizza and vegetarian dawali (rolled grape leaves) are favorites for many customers.
Pastry chef Gina Soccio has worked at Laziza for 3 years. She said the triple chocolate mousse brownie is a hit with everyone, even if they say they’re not a chocolate person. It’s their best seller.
“It suggests a very heavy dessert, but it is very light,” Soccio said. “It starts with a small 3- or 4-inch brownie base, which is actually gluten free, and then on top of that goes a whipped milk chocolate ganache, and then on top of that is a whipped white chocolate ganache, and it’s finished off with some cocoa powder and dark chocolate shavings. I think what makes it so special is that it does feel like an indulgence. It just feels very special and fun to eat.”
Whether customers are seeking to get a quick burger and beer at the bar, make reservations, book the restaurant’s second floor banquet room, book off-site catering, or enjoy an intimate dining experience, Laziza has it covered.
“The restaurant is really an extension of what hospitality means to us,” Frantz said. “We want people in the restaurant to feel the same way they would feel if they were at our house, that kind of warm, genuine welcome, and that was our very first focus when we got here.”
Dining and Cooking