Mezzo Market

Description: Locally owned neighborhood eatery, bar, and grab-and-go market located on The Plaza in Plaza Midwood. The space serves lunch, dinner, and weekend brunch, with a menu focused on pizza, sandwiches, salads, entrees, and Mediterranean-inspired flavors. It also offers beer, wine, cocktails, prepared meals, frozen take-home options, and gourmet market goods. Good for casual meals, patio dining, takeout, drinks, quick lunch, and relaxed neighborhood hangouts.

Comments: Lively atmosphere. Bright, lots of natural light, and a well-sized patio area with a grassy patch where there are sometimes soccer goals for kids. As a result, this place is popular with families. I’ve seen a whole troop posted up here, with the parents drinking at the bar, the small kids playing outside on the patio, and the teenagers in a booth with their laptops studying.

If you’ve ever been to Rhino Market, it has a similar kind of neighborhood market feel, but with a much more expansive Mediterranean kitchen. The food is good. The lamb shank sandwich in particular is very much worth your attention. There’s plenty of seating, free parking out front, and more parking around the corner on Mecklenburg Avenue if the main lot fills up.

They also serve coffee and pastries, and there’s a convenience store section with cold drinks, snacks, pantry items, and frozen meals to go. So, it truly is a market. I like it. In the evenings, it gets packed out with families and the after-work drinking crowd at the bar, but during the daytime it’s a solid place to work remotely or catch lunch with a friend.