Chef/owner Daniel Maggipinto ran the Hearst Corporation dining room (Hearst being the publisher of Redbook, Cosmopolitan, Town and Country and others) before coming here to work at Arthur's and Cakewalk. His wife, Maria Townes, is a granddaughter of Hap Townes and niece of ``little'' Hap.

Also in the kitchen is Kim Totzke-Farr, formerly executive chef at Finezza.

With this impeccable genealogy and wonderful, healthful food, Dancing Bear can hardly miss.

Dancing Bear represents the next phase of health food restaurant: the menu is divided evenly between carnivorous and meatless, but never veers into the hippy-dippy. Instead, the menu draws from the cuisines of the Mediterranean, from spiced Moroccan beans, crunchy steamed greens and rice ($5.95) to the huge Mediterranean roll-up ($7.25), a surprising combination of white beans, mushrooms, rice, caramelized onions and feta cheese in a whole wheat tortilla, to moist Turkish chicken kebabs ($7.75), marinated in yogurt and mint.

It's a menu that features roasted vegetables instead of sprouts. Goat cheese instead of tofu. Polenta pound cake instead of carob cookies.

Greece is well-represented in this pan-Mediterranean menu with a fantastic Greek scampi and an equally miraculous Greek salad sandwich. Big fat shrimp float in a rich, oily sauce of tomatoes, olives, shallots and feta cheese over saffron rice for only $8.75. The Greek salad sandwich ($8.25) features thick slices of pink roasted lamb with mixed greens, peppers and tomatoes, served with olive tapenade and raita in bread.

Pasta takes up a whole section, and portobello mushroom pasta ($8.50) is the one to get. Three kinds of mushrooms are lightly seasoned with shallots, garlic and thyme and ladled over thick noodles.

Only the meze platter ($8.25) didn't work. Overcooked vegetable fritters, a strangely sweet caponata, and underseasoned hummus. The best thing about it was the slices of preserved lemon, a North African thing. Sour, sweet, and chewy, we liked them so much we just picked 'em up and ate 'em.

Desserts like the blackberry streusel coffeecake and chocolate ricotta cheesecake are as good as they sound. We especially liked a coarse-crumbed, rustic cornmeal poundcake with fresh fruit. With inexpensive, homemade breakfast offerings like cinnamon French toast ($4.95) and Irish oatmeal ($2.25), and pitas stuffed with scrambled eggs and peppers ($5.25), the Maggipintos are working to bring in a bigger morning traffic. Saturday brunch is more elaborate, featuring breakfast burritos made with chicken sausage and eggs Benedict with homemade Hollandaise.

Dancing Bear is located in the building that formerly housed Garden Allegro, and you'll have the same parking struggle. Besides the four spaces out front, there are a handful in back, and you can always take your chances and park at the express acupuncture place, or the oral surgery place.

And the restaurant's name? My brother, a walking repository of information on the Grateful Dead, says dancing bears are a Dead thing, offering this helpful comment: ``If I were a cop, and I saw a vehicle with a dancing bear sticker on it, I'd pull it over.''

First Amendment? What First Amendment?

location:
Dancing Bear
1805 Church St., 963-9900.

Copyright 1997, Nashville Banner