Come for the kibbe and stay for the ghreibeh

Yasmeen’s is a charming, dreamlike place. Watercolors of village scenes hang on the pale yellow walls. Even the mural (a vineyard seen through the window of a Lebanese stone house) has an airy, weightless feel.

Think of it as a sort of tea room, South Pasadena’s own dainty place a bit out of time, that happens to serve somebody’s rather personal interpretation of Lebanese home cooking. Everything is fresh and made from scratch, including the baked goods -- Yasmeen’s is also a bakery.

When I call the food personal, I mean, for instance, that the lamb kebab is two little skewers (on slivers of bamboo -- you have to scrape a bit to get the meat off them) of exceptionally tender lamb, evocatively flavored with wild thyme and a little red pepper. That’s not the usual sort of Lebanese kebab, which is more likely to be rubbed with allspice and olive oil. With its casual, outdoorsy air, though, it might be what’s in the back of your mind when you think “Mediterranean.”

The beef kebab is less distinctive, flavored with not much more than pepper. The kafta kebab, though it would be made with lamb instead of beef in Lebanon, is a respectable version: ground meat lightened with onions and parsley. The chicken kebab and chicken shawarma are both more distinctive than their beef equivalents, warmly spiced with cumin and red pepper.

The kibbe plate is half a dozen deep-fried Lebanese meatballs (also available a la carte by the meatball). Their fillings have true home-cooked Lebanese flavor -- fried onions, sweet spices and some well-toasted pine nuts.

You can get good, crunchy falafel, six to a plate, often (but not always) sprinkled with sesame seeds.

All these entree items also are available in the form of wrap sandwiches.

There’s usually a daily special or two as well, announced on a little board near the cash register. One day it was stuffed cabbage, quite different from European versions in their often-sweet tomato sauces. Like Lebanese stuffed grape leaves, the cabbage dolmas came in a light, lemony broth. Other days the daily special might be an American dish.

The salad of romaine and tomatoes that comes on every plate is sprinkled with dried mint instead of the usual tart ground sumac. There’ll always be some turnip pickles on your plate, but sometimes a green olive or two as well, or some tahini sauce. Sometimes there’s pilaf, sometimes a loaf of pita, cut in half and virtually shrink-wrapped in plastic film.

Maybe there’s a pattern to it all, but I can’t tell and don’t much care. At Yasmeen’s, I always seem to be in an accepting mood.

Most of the appetizers are Lebanese standards such as sambousik, a sort of samosa filled with either ground meat or a pungent white cheese, or fatayer, rather similar but stuffed with spinach made tart with ground sumac. The menu description might lead you to expect “meat pie” to be a sort of pizza, like lahmajoun. It actually is more like a pie, or maybe a miniature lahmajoun with turned-up edges. Anyway, the dense ground-meat topping has an aromatic dash of spices.

You can get all these items, along with some kibbe meatballs and meat-stuffed grape leaves, on a $9.99 platter for two. Yasmeen’s also makes the familiar vegetarian grape leaves with a rice filling, and lately has taken to promoting its meatless items. Apparently, some vegetarians like salad as a wrap sandwich.

There are two bakery cases, one showing the usual baklava varieties -- diamond-shaped, cigar-shaped (sometimes with a walnut filling, sometimes with peanuts!), crown-shaped (whole pistachios in that one) and book-folded (pine nuts). They’re perfectly OK, as is the crescent-shaped butter cookie ghreibeh (kourambiedes), but the baker’s heart seems to be in European-type cookies and cakes, mostly displayed in another case.

The showiest is a chocolate cake with whipped cream filling, but there are excellent triangular or heart-shaped cookies with apricot or strawberry fillings, very good chewy pecan bars and even fresh chocolate croissant (pain au chocolat) and a decent flaky Danish pastry ... guava-flavored.

Danish? Yes, Danish. They’ve even got rugelach here. And a bunch of miniature cakes and tarts, $1.50 each, for daintiness’ sake.

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Yasmeen’s

Location: 818 S. Fair Oaks Ave., South Pasadena, (626) 799-1790.

Price: Appetizers, 50 cents to 85 cents; dips and salads, $2.99 to $4.99; wrap sandwiches, $3.50 to $3.99; specialty plates, $5.99 to $6.99; pastries, 75 cents to $2.

Best dishes: Lamb kebab, kibbe, chicken shawarma, chicken kebab, chocolate cake.

Details: Open 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday,

8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday. No alcohol. Street parking; small lot in back. MasterCard and Visa.