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Warm ovals of pita bread, straight out of the oven, still puffed up into soft balloons when they were tucked into a white napkin, told us the evening would be special.

Comfortable in our booth in the elegant dining room, we dipped the pita into cool homemade yogurt, used it to scoop up a dip of ground walnuts flavored with pomegranate, wrapped it around thinly sliced shawarma and a tahini sauce. More always came when we ran out.

We talked about nothing but the food we were eating. My friend compared dishes to his Lebanese uncle’s version. We regretted all the choices of mezza we hadn’t made, compared and shared the ones we had. I tried raw lamb kibbee for the first time, trying bits of the lamb and bulghur wheat ground into a silky pate, some bites with herbed onions, some with shredded radish, some with a little taste of whipped essence-of-garlic sauce.

• Photos: Phoenician Taverna opens in Mason

Baklawa, with tiny cups of strong coffee flavored with cardamom, ended one of the loveliest evenings of eating I’ve had in some time.

Phoenician Taverna in Mason. (Photo by Tony Tribble)

Phoenecian Taverna is that rare and so welcome thing: an ethnic restaurant that trusts its customers. Instead of dumbing the menu down, owner Wassim Matar assumes we’ll find what we love among the most complete Lebanese menu I’ve seen here.

Matar managed a Lebanese restaurant in Washington, D.C., in the 1980s called Lebanese Taverna, which grew into a small chain. The chef here, Hassib Alaouie, was the original chef of the Washington restaurant.

Like quite a few new ethnic restaurants in the more authentic style, the Taverna is in Mason – in the same small shopping area as Sichuan Bistro and Sura Korean. But unlike many ethnic restaurants, this has a fine-dining atmosphere with subtly striped fabrics, a small bar, tasteful light sconces, marble table tops and elegant restrooms.

It’s elegant, but convivial and welcoming. The kitchen is open, where you can see chickens and skewered shawarma spinning. Once you make the painful decision of what mezze, or appetizers, to order and they come to fill up the table, it’s all about sharing, serving yourself, putting together combinations of bites. We drank Lebanese white wine and one of the big hits of the evening: fresh lemonade flavored with orange blossom water ($2).

We tried fool ($5), simmered dry beans in a thickened broth; spinach pies ($6), small triangles of dough filled with lemony spinach; laban b’khyar ($4.75), nothing but creamy yogurt with mint and cucumber, and the raw lamb kibbeh nayeh ($8.50). M’hammara ($6.75) walnut dip is a must-order.

Next time, I might just order as many mezza as the table can hold, but only because it’s so much fun to eat the small plates, not because the entrees aren’t delicious.

There is a crisp/juicy rotisserie chicken, with garlic whip and french fries, that is a bone fide bargain at $10. The beef/lamb shawarma ($15.50) is beef and lamb stacked, skewered and sliced thin – not that composite cone of meat used in most gyros – with tahini sauce.

I had lamb loin ($23), sliced and topped with herb sauce, plated next to crisp slices of potato. Vine leaves ($15.50) are stuffed with ground lamb, beef and rice. My friends thought they were too soft, in comparison to their personal ideal; I found them delicious.

Service needs more work to match the professionalism of the food: our server, for instance, laid the menu back down on our table for dessert on top of bits of food and crumbs.

Lebanese desserts can seem awfully sweet, but try the house-made baklava ($6), very fresh and not sugar-soaked. There are two squares in an order; one is pistachio, one is walnut. If you’ve gone as far as you can on an ethnic adventure, you can end with a scoop of Graeter’s.