Given the number of lounge/club/restaurant hybrids around, it can be tricky to sort out where the food is serious and where it's merely a chaser for a 20-ingredient martini. Byblos, a Middle Eastern-flavored lounge/club/restaurant on 18th Street, can be categorized as the former. With a full menu and a kitchen that starts serving meals at 11 a.m. — well before the bar gets cracking — eating is as important here as dancing.

Owned by the Sawan family, who operate the Cedars and Fez restaurants, Byblos opened last spring in the space where their Rittenhouse outpost, Sawan, used to be. A bouncer and cafe tables now occupy the sidewalk outside. Inside, a dark vestibule opens onto a display of late 1990s decadence — the kind of dramatic, exoticized setting that enables even the laziest seduction. Tiny white square tiles give the room the look and feel of a dehumidified hammam. The tables have an ungainly wooden appendage on the side that makes them awkward for both arriving and leaving, though the arrangement is actually comfy once you are sitting.

House music, drum 'n' bass, chill-out and long-forgotten rave tracks pulse through the speakers. Hookahs in a range of fruit flavors are available for the toking on a nightly basis for $20; the buzz is free of charge on Thursday evenings.

It's a wild stew for the senses, and here is the inherent problem with the hybrid concept. Too often in such places the external stimuli drown out the more intimate experience of chewing and swallowing, so you end up with a kind of synesthesia where you hear your sandwich and the bass is beating in your gut.

Under these circumstances, drinks like the house Vango (vodka and mango juice on the rocks) and Byblostini (cranberry vodka, blue curacao and sour mix) are practically necessary. A few olives would be nice, too. Unfortunately the only thing to munch on is some napkin-cosseted pita that is disappointingly brittle and dry — a condition only vaguely improved by a tabletop bottle of olive oil. Best to move on to the real highlight here, the pan-Mediterranean assortment of small dishes like fattush, a Lebanese bread salad that mixes cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers and onions with still-crisp fragments of toasted pita and refreshing bites of parsley. Grilled octopuses, nicely dressed in tangy vinegar and olive oil, are chewy morsels of cephalopod goodness. We contributed to the stagy ambiance by ordering saganakiopa, a brass platter of Greek Kasseri cheese doused in brandy and set in flames by a fearless server. Warm and just slightly creamy, it has the delicious alcohol-tart crust of the bottom of a fondue pot. Better still are the kibbi, fried balls of ground wheat stuffed with ground beef, pine nuts and sautéed onions.

Where the small plates are evenhanded, the entrees, a mix of Moroccan, Middle Eastern, French, Greek, Spanish and Italian fare, are highly inconsistent. The seafood paella's mussels are gritty and stingily small, and the scallops are undercooked and flabby. This is especially disappointing because the scarce chunks of chorizo and shrimp are just fine and the bed of moist saffron rice is suitably flavorful.

Alongside some very successful cooking, these kinds of missteps are all the more frustrating. Moussaka, layers of ground meat and ribbons of eggplant topped with a fluff of mashed potatoes and creamy béchamel, is on point; its side dish of overcooked squash is not. The same squash, heavy and sodden, is prominently featured in a couscous that has only a few onions, carrots and raisins to offset its blandness. Most inexplicably, perfectly tender shish taouk — cubes of chicken and vegetables on skewers — is sullied by stale-tasting rice. However, we enjoyed the poulet au citron, a mild and fragrant glazed chicken breast served atop a rice pilaf with dried apricots.

Dessert, too, is fair to middling. Vanilla créme brûlée is appropriately smooth and eggy with a crisp caramelized sugar coating, but has only the faintest suggestion of vanilla. Baklava with a scoop of vanilla ice cream is a few shots of honey short of delicious — layers of phyllo and ground nuts deteriorate into a pile of sweet rubble on the plate. The best dessert is the most simple: a tiny pot of melted chocolate surrounded by strawberries. It's a classic combination that tastes delicious — and it sounds pretty good, too.

Byblos 114 S. 18th St., 215-568-3050, www.byblosphilly.com

• Open daily, 11 a.m.-2 a.m.
• Appetizers, $5-$10; entrees, $11-$24
• Wheelchair accessible.
• Smoking is permitted.
• Reservations accepted.
• Credit cards accepted.