Meze Wine Cafe & Market

I really want to love this place.  Good cheeses, pâté, and other meats.  However, the service is just awful!  We stopped in to get some picnic stuff.  The woman starts waiting on us, says she has to go get something, and just starts chatting with the dishwasher.  When we finally go to the side to find her, she says she just had to wash her hands.  This kind of thing happens frequently, but we keep going back because the food is good.  They just need to fix their service.  I think the owners have no idea it's like this when they're not present.

The short: Post-work hangout-type spot with delicious food and a wide variety of drinks, meats, and cheeses to chose from.

This place would blend really well in a big city. It's been awhile since I've sat on stools where I can see the open kitchen, surrounded by bottles of wine and cases of meat and cheese.

This review is for their medjool dates only. (My friends did not like their overpriced tartine pickle sandwhich). It's stuffed with lucious spanish sheep's milk fromage blanc, wrapped with delightfully crunchy speck (smoked cured ham). I've never had a date be the main focus as a dish, so it was surprising that the flavors melted together in a combined bliss. I carefully bit into each one, savoring the flavors as much as possible. I highly recommend it!
I wish the dates weren't the same price as a full entree elsewhere, considering my college budget, but I'm not sure where else I would find the combination of flavors!

I also chose Fentiman's sparkling orange ginger drink. $4 is pricey for it, but I figured it to be a novelty drink, if that. The flavors added a nice touch to the dates!

I'll definitely come back to explore the other foods on the menu.

Meze is a great place and a unique addition to San Luis Obispo. The quality of the meats and cheeses is very high and you can tell they were curated well.

The staff always makes good wine recommendations and the bread pudding is out of this world. The cheese and meat boards can look small for what you're paying, but by the time you work through it, you're definitely more full than you originally thought you would be.

On a side note, it seems like when the owners aren't there the staff gets a little lackluster. We've been forgotten before when there were only 2-3 parties there at once, so there really was no excuse.