Critic’s Choice: Flatbread, a point of pride from the Mediterranean

For as long as humans have been cultivating grains, cooks have been baking flatbreads in the embers or on primitive wood-fired ovens. Pizza is a flatbread, beloved the world over. But it’s certainly not the only flatbread from the Mediterranean or the Middle East. Consider Turkey’s lahmacun spread with minced lamb and spices or the long slender pide topped with melting cheese or vegetables. Cooks all over the Mediterranean riff on the flatbread genre with some pretty delicious results. The dough can be thin and crisp or soft and tender. The shape can be round or an elongated oval. But it’s the wonderful toppings — lamb or sausage, fresh or aged cheeses, vegetables or wild greens and herbs — that make these flatbreads the stuff of dreams.

Momed

At the new Momed at Atwater Crossing, rustic Turkish pide stars on the menu in several variations. The shape is an elongated oval with pointed ends, and toppings include cheese and a sprinkling of za’atar, summer squash with sun gold tomatoes, pine nuts and parsley tahini, even figs with caramelized onion and arugula. But you can’t go wrong with the spicy beef soujouk with tomato and scarlet piquillo pepper. Listen up: Monday is pide night, when all the pies are $10, plus bottles of wine are half off. That includes Atlantis white from Santorini, Greece, and Movia Sauvignon Blanc from Croatia.

3245 Casitas Ave., Atwater (323) 522-3488, atmomed.com. And at the original location, 233 South Beverly Drive, Beverly Hills (310) 270-4444. Pide, $12.50 to $16.50.

Bäco Mercat

If you go to Bäco Mercat, of course you have to have one of chef-owner Josef Centeno’s signature bäcos, a tender taco-pizza hybrid. But don’t neglect his Barcelona-style coca. The thin, crisp rounds of dough come with half a dozen toppings. My pick is the “bondiga”: That’s lamb meatballs with three cheeses and smoked jalapeño. The “el cordero” is topped with a spicy merguez sausage ragu, a smear of harissa and feta cheese, and “the salty jowl” is garnished with tomato, guanciale, Taleggio cheese — and a fried egg. For $5 more, you can embellish any coca with pork belly bacon sausage. Yes, that’s right.

408 S. Main St., Los Angeles, (213) 687-8808, www.bacomercat.com. Coca, $12 to $14; bäco, $9 to $14.

Full of Life Flatbread in Los Alamos

Planning a weekend in the Santa Ynez Valley? Put Full of Life Flatbread in Los Alamos on your itinerary. No reservations, so you’ll be queuing with the locals for Clark Staub’s lusty flatbreads from the raging wood-fired oven. The menu is small and focused, a handful of starters plus the night’s flatbreads and a few specials. I’m partial to the Central Coast fennel sausage flatbread with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms, cheese and herbs plucked straight from the garden outside. Mmm, but this week he’s got a lamb merguez flatbread with yellow romesco, cherry tomatoes — and dandelion greens. That could definitely be worth the drive by itself.

225 W. Bell St., Los Alamos, (805) 344-4400, www.fulloflifefoods.com. Flatbreads, $10 to $22. Open only Thursday to Sunday, dinner only.

irene.virbila@latimes.com

Twitter: @sirenevirbila