KYMA IS A RESTAURANT I WANT TO LIKE.

I’m drawn to its clean lines, the comfy cobalt-blue banquette stucked against spotless white walls, the contrast of warm wood floors and a dash of exposed brick. Kyma’s young staff is enthusiastic and eager to please. And most of all, on paper anyway, the restaurant offers a compelling menu of Spanish and Greek tapas. So I very much want to like Kyma. And I would, if only the food were better.

My party of four met at the restaurant at seven o’clock, and one of the young hostesses seated us near the downstairs bar in a room peppered with other groups of four, fresh-faced daters sporting khakis and madras. When we inquired about relocating upstairs, away from the bar, the young woman unhesitatingly moved us—twice (so that we could be near a window). This only reinforced the good impression the hostess made when I called the day before to make reservations
(she was also very helpful giving directions and parking information).

We settled into our corner table near a family of four with two astonishingly well-behaved youngsters in tow, and began perusing the beverage list. Kyma, which means “wave” in Greek, has fifteen signature cocktails, several bottled beers, and a decent wine list featuring selections from the Mediterranean and the New World.

We sampled the Mo-Jo-Jito, a twist on the mojito that uses Captain Morgan passion fruit rum, mint, and fresh juices (the restaurant’s most popular cocktail, according to its general manager).  It was all fresh fruitiness, served in a generously sized glass, but the $14 price tag still seemed egregious.

And after one small bottle of Belgian beer clocked in at $11.75, the glass of Kir-Yanni Estate rosé I ordered seemed a bargain at $6.  I enjoy tapas because you get to sample so many dishes, and our strategy was to taste a bit of everything.  Kyma’s menu offers nearly seventy Greek and Spanish small plates (mezzes in Greek; tapas in Spanish) in several categories: soups and salads, vegetables, seafood, and meats and poultry, with Greek offerings starred in blue ink and Spanish in an appropriate saffron. The menu also lists baskets of Spanish and Mediterranean wood-fired bread (with accompaniments you order separately), cheese plates, pizzas, and several different paellas.

The bread, soups, and salads we ordered first set the hit-or-miss theme of the evening. The Mediterranean bread basket was filled with a sampling of pita, olive, and sourdough breads. They were delicious, the result of baking in a woodstove, but coupled with a small ramekin of garlicky, cucumber-studded tzatziki, this nibble came to a very filling $7.75.  Gazpacho was cleverly deconstructed into a cup of tomato base and a small white spoon filled with expert- ly minced veggies, allowing diners to empty the spoon into the soup.  The presentation was elegant and playful at the same time—and the soup tasted as fresh as it looked.

We had less luck with the fassoulada, a listless tomato-based soup containing a handful of overcooked fava beans. There was also a surprisingly flavorless tabouleh and an underwhelming romaine salad, made only slightly interesting with the addition of salty Cabrales cheese.

As we moved on to the other menu categories, we had good luck with the classic ensaladilla rusa, a flavorful combination of shrimp, tuna, potatoes, peas, and wasabi-tinged shad roe, bound together with garlic-spiked mayonnaise; a flaky spanikopita bursting with spinach; and nicely grilled calamari (wish the octopus we ordered had been just as expertly grilled). We split opinions on the canelones de carne. Two diners relished the richness of the ground beef, pork, and foie gras
filling nestled in a manchego-bechamel sauce; others found it simply too much of several good things.

But for every hit, there was a disappointment. We were distinctly unimpressed by the blandness of the eggplant salad and the oddly tasteless Greek crab cake (garnished with what seemed to be the same tomato base used for the fassoulada). Everyone around us seemed to be ordering the mini chorizos, which one of us described as sitting “like little Vienna sausages” atop mashed potatoes, so we did too. The sausages were only mildly spiced, and the mashed potatoes, room temperature.

But perhaps the biggest disappointment (and the most expensive at $49) was the paella de marisco. Kyma’s chef, José Picazo, who worked for six years under Washington, D.C., superchef José Andrés at his Jaleo restaurants, says he helped create its signature paellas. That’s why I hope our paella was just an anomaly, an inadvertent slip through the cracks.  While the lobster tail and the giant shrimp had some sweet, tender meat, the overall dish—the rice, the monkfish, the mussels—was dry and overcooked, and darn it if that same tomato base didn’t turn up once again.

The restaurant has decided to offer paella Sunday through Thursday only; it needs to improve if it is to be offered at all.

By the time we were ready for dessert, the restaurant was packed with a younger crowd, seemingly prepped for the DJ who was scheduled to spin tunes very shortly (one young woman wearing what appeared to be a sheer black demi-bra looked ready for the club scene, anyway). With such a small space, my guess is that any conversation going on would quickly die away once the music began, so we chose our desserts post haste.  Unfortunately, they followed the spotty pattern of the rest of our meal.

Although rice pudding was cleverly made to look like a cappuccino, it had the pervasive and weird flavor of green Life Savers. Rolls of baklava stood on end like towers but tasted sandy instead of the sweet balance of syrup and nuts one expects. The flan was unobjectionable. I had doubts when one of my companions ordered the tequila sunrise, but this very retro dish, an updated Jell-O parfait complete with fresh fruit and a hint of orange peel, turned out to be the hit.

After digesting my dining experience, I still have somewhat mixed feelings about Kyma. I think the beverage list is priced way too high, and the food (the paella above all) needs to improve. I think the restaurant has the chance to be better because everyone is trying so darn hard to make sure diners have a good time, but the trick is to get them to come back, and service alone won’t do it.

Mary K. Zajac is a food writer living in Baltimore.