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When I was a child, my mother''s favorite thing to make for dinner was reservations. This meant that at least once a month we would eat at a restaurant catering to Detroit''s 350,000-strong population of Arabs, mostly Lebanese and Syrians, whose forebears had come to the Motor City to work in the auto factories. The folks of Lebanon and Syria don''t always get along, but they do share many culinary traditions, and a diplomatic way of referring to this two-headed cultural creature is via the term Levantine.

I liked the lamb and chicken shishkebab that retained the tangy lemon and garlic flavor of the marinade, as well as the shwarma (a sort of Levantine gyro), but I preferred to order an "ethnic" appetizer plate just to see the surprised look on the waitress'' face.

When the appetizer plate arrived, I''d load up my pita bread with the roasted eggplant puree called baba ghanouj. The baba ghanouj was seasoned with ingredients we never used at home, items like tahini (sesame seed paste), garlic and lemon. I like the garnishes on this dish, too--salty black olives, tomato slices and chopped parsley. Next, I''d heap on some hummus (chickpea puree), flavored the same as the baba ghanouj but decorated with drizzles of olive oil and paprika.

I''d alternate bites of the deep-fried felafel patties made with ground chickpeas, garlic, onions and cumin with the best thing in the appetizer mix--the tabbouleh. Levantine tabbouleh features loads of chopped parsley, mint, tomatoes and cucumbers woven with grains of burghul wheat that have soaked up a lemony dressing. You''re supposed to eat felafel with a tahini dressing, but I always thought it tasted better with tabbouleh.

With this meal, I''d drink lemonade flavored with orange blossom water. For dessert, I''d skip the baklava and order "bird''s nest," a phyllo pastry with edges turned up that held pistachio nuts. Waiters would serve my mother coffee brewed with cardamom pods in a pot on a brass tray suspended from three chains.

By the time I was 15, I thought I might like to open my own restaurant. My social studies teacher at the Quaker high school I attended encouraged me to interview a restaurant owner.

I arranged to meet with Esther Michael, owner of the Sheikh Restaurant. I arrived early and sat in the kitchen with three women who didn''t speak English, all of them busy making torpedo-shaped kibbeh, the national dish of Syria and Lebanon. The women would take a ball of meat--a ground mixture of lamb, onions and fine burghul wheat--and insert their middle finger into it making a thin shell. Inside this shell, they would place a second mixture of ground lamb, onions, pine nuts, butter and allspice. They then would either deep-fry or bake the concoction.

During our interview, Ms. Michael told me that restaurateurs must be fastidious about cleanliness, only serve food made from the freshest ingredients and always greet the customers at the door with a smile despite 96-hour work weeks.

I thanked her and prepared to leave. "Of course, I am inviting you to stay for lunch!" she cried. She offered me a copious plate of deep-fried kibbeh, crunchy on the outside and juicy on the inside, with a cucumber and yogurt salad.

After a meal like that, you could almost feel the Mediterranean sun on your face, even in the subzero temperatures of a Michigan winter.