By Paul Reidinger

IN COLLEGE A recurrent dinnertime curiosity was the phenomenon we called – in the hallowed tradition of undergraduates down the food-service ages – mystery meat. Mystery meat was a shape-shifter and a texture-shifter; its pieces could be round, rectangular, or indeterminate, and in the mouth it might be tough, rubbery, or even squishy. I would like to say that mystery meat was invariably dressed in a brownish-gray gravy, neither thick nor thin, and of no certain flavor, but I can't say that because there may well have been gravy-free moments. Mystery meat was, for us, a near-nightly happenstance, and all this was long ago, in the malaise-ridden years when Jimmy Carter roamed the chilly White House in his cardigan sweater. Hence much blurring of the specifics in memory.

I thought of mystery meat recently while tucking into a plate of adana kebab ($9) at Pera, a Turkish restaurant that opened earlier this endlessly rainy spring in an Inner Richmond space that feels very coffeehousey, not least because of the brick fireplace at the back wall. The menu coyly describes the adana kebab as consisting of "spicy, seasoned Mediterranean meatballs," and while the chief meat of the Mediterranean – Turkey in particular – is lamb, we detected no lamb in the flattened, grill-marked, juicy disks we were served. Lamb is gamey and dominant; Pera's adana kebab, despite lively spicing and a lovely smokiness, is of a much milder temper. If I had to guess I would guess a blend: partly of beef, because of a certain ruddiness, and partly of veal, because of a certain smooth richness. There might be pork too. As with meat loaf, the blend is crucial and quite likely proprietary. We are not supposed to know, just enjoy.

Perhaps it was just the aura and memory of mystery meat, but Pera struck me right off as having a college-town feel. There is no college nearby (the closest such institution is probably the University of San Francisco, a good 15- or 20-minute hike along Clement and Arguello), but the place is full of young faces, backpacks, laptops with WiFi cards. The low prices are surely a factor here; main courses at dinner hover within a tick or two on either side of $10, and lunch is likely to be a $6 or $7 affair – and far more interesting than Subway.

The midday eye is drawn ineluctably to the menu's listing of pides, which are described as "Turkish-style pizzas!" but are really more like banana-shaped calzones. (The word pide, by the way, is a close relation to the Greek word pita, which is a direct borrowing of the Arabic word for pie; it is an only slightly less close relation to pizza. Variations on flat bread are common throughout the Mediterranean world.) Pera stuffs its pides with standards – spinach, feta cheese – along with items that turn up less often, such as salmon and soujouk ($7). This last is a spicy, garlicky beef sausage that reminded me of the Polish sausage kielbasa; it is sliced on the bias and stuffed into its bread envelope with chopped tomato and mozzarella cheese.

Lighter appetites might prefer the chicken version ($7), with boneless chunks of pomegranate-marinated bird, but regardless of their filling, the pides are one-dish meals of meat bundled with salad and served in a warm, fragrant wrapper of sesame seed-dotted bread. If you like a bit more deconstruction, you can get essentially the same chicken in kebab form ($9), grilled on skewers (though these disappear by the time the plate arrives at the table) and served with a salad of chopped lettuce and a heap of rice or french fries.

The little dishes vary. Turkish lentil soup ($4) had that distinctive rusty-rose color and was tasty but a little thin. Feta and melon ($5) is one of those classic salty-sweet pairings, and the casaba melon was certainly ripe, but the presentation was rather lackluster: just sticks of white cheese and chunks of pale greenish-yellow fruit. Falafel ($4.50) looked like three golden golf balls, which with their hard crust were difficult to deal with, though we finally did manage to crack them open, and, slathered with yogurt sauce, they went down agreeably enough. And fattoush ($5) was a sea of chopped red and green bell peppers, with bits of tomato, cucumber, red onion, and parsley bobbing to the surface here and there and some crumblings of feta cheese added for vibrancy. I love peppers, but even two of us could not finish the fattoush.

Although Pera isn't an especially big restaurant, its corner position means that practically every seat is a window seat, and from the broad windows one can catch a glimpse of San Francisco's magical power to seem like other places. I had a brief vision of Paris, of some little café in an untouristy corner of the 11th arrondissement. No, my companion said, it's like Broadway in Vancouver. I conceded this point, for Clement is like Broadway: a cheerfully tatty, out-of-the-way thoroughfare lined with a world of restaurants, each a delightful mystery eventually to be solved.

Pera. 349 Clement (at Fifth Ave.), S.F. (415) 666-3839. Mon.-Fri., 9 a.m.-11 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 9 a.m.-midnight. Beer and wine. Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Not noisy. Wheelchair accessible.