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"MEDITERRANEAN AFTERNOON." That's the title of the framed photograph hanging in the ladies' room at Blu Greek Taverna in Marietta.

It's the kind of photograph to get lost in, a visual repast of blue sea and white clouds with intermittent streaks of sun.

CALVIN CRUCE/Staff Photographer (ENLARGE)
Snapper is grilled with ladolemono (olive oil and lemon sauce) and then garnished and served whole at Blu Greek Taverna.
CALVIN CRUCE/Staff Photographer (ENLARGE)
Wall designs give diners a visual taste of the Mediterranean, but the real flavor is in dishes such as Marides Me Horta (below), lightly battered flash-fried smelt in sunflower oil, served with mixed greens and topped with olive oil and lemon.
CALVIN CRUCE/Staff Photographer (ENLARGE)
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The entire tavern looks as if it were airlifted from the coast of the Adriatic — dramatic silk screens of Mediterranean vistas take you beyond the restaurant's walls to a place in your imagination that is warm and sweet, with scents of citrus, sea and salt.

The very real smell of kokinisto, a rich, tomato-y beef stew, will bring you back to Marietta. Blu's menu reads like a textbook of all things Greek — flambéed saganaki, spongey triangles of salty feta with fat Kalamata olives drizzled in oil, dolmades, tangy avgolemono soup, mousaka. The wine list has two offerings: red or white.

There is no need for novelty here, and you won't find it. Greek food, like so many of its counterparts in other countries along the Mediterranean, is peasant's food. Blu's pretty facade dresses things up in comfortable fashion, but it is really just an honest neighborhood tavern, filled with earnest dishes that encompass some of the country's most beloved dishes.

Chef Yiannis Kourkoulos often has little specials that you may have to ask about. One evening I almost didn't save enough room for bougatsa, one of the many custards Greek and Turkish cooks make with semolina and envelope in layers of phyllo. Blu serves a wealthy portion with drizzlings of sticky sweet sugar icing and chocolate (couple it with demitasse cups filled with strong Greek coffee).

But first, there is saganaki. Owner Jean-Louis Constantinides is from Cyprus, and so Blu's kitchen makes this dish of fried goat cheese with Cyprian halloumi — rather than kesseri or kefalotiri cheeses — and presents it traditionally at the table doused in vodka and flambéed, the dancing flames squelched with lemon juice. The amount of vodka was different each time I ordered it; once there was so much the dish tasted sort of like a really delicious cheese-and-vodka martini.

Oretika (appetizers) are my favorite part of this menu, especially the feta cheese and olives when brought with a traditional horiatiki salad (here with lettuce, though in Greece this would rarely be included as an ingredient) of cucumbers and red onions, tomatoes, peppers, feta and olives. Warm pita is a perfect scoop for the whole shebang to make its way to your mouth.

It's hard not to notice that most other diners order some form of souvlakia, and the waitresses really push the one dish of a mixed grill of lamb chops, pork, grilled chicken and grilled beef on a heap of lemon-and-oregano potatoes and pita bread.

Smaller appetites will enjoy the simplicity of chicken souvlaki (kebabs), with roasted chunks of chicken, a tomato or two and slivers of red bell pepper, all possessing just the right amount of char from the grill.

There are minor goofs — the kitchen is often out of just what you were wanting most — Cyprian sausage links or kokinisto, horta — and if it's working towards 10 o'clock on a weeknight don't bother to ask for coffee, Greek or otherwise: Once the kitchen closes the waitresses are not interested in extending your stay.

But the enchanting strains of staccato voices over a balalaika hypnotize as much as the wine and almost as much as the food.

Like the sunny photos that line Blu's walls, this meager restaurant has a way of transporting you to warmer shores, feta included.