Review - Manoosh Pizzeria
Apologies for the long time between reviews. With COVID-19 hitting Sydney restaurants hard, it seemed pertinent to suspend food reviewing for the duration, though of course that hasn’t meant ignore our struggling hospitality mates completely! On Facebook, Twitter and Instagram Does My Bomb Look Big In This? has been showcasing home delivery items, home cooking experiments and given over space to our favourite restaurants, showcasing how they have adapted their offerings adjust to the new dining paradigm.
In terms of ethics, when restaurants don’t usually provide their food takeaway or home delivery, it seems unfair to review their offerings, so I haven’t. The new normal has however made me ponder what sort of foods are really suitable as takeaway of delivery items, and of course the ethics of whether we should be using services like Deliveroo and UberEats at all.
Going back to basics, I have been supporting smaller businesses with my spend, and only using delivery when the restaurant provides it themselves, ensuring the money stays in their hands, not with a big multi-national. Manoosh Pizzeria in Enmore are takeaway and home delivery experts. You can see it in the packaging used by this four-restaurant Lebanese pizza chain, who send out your food in a hot box perched on the back of one of their branded motor scooters.
Served in cardboard lidded foil trays, Lebanese meze items travel well, and would be easy to reheat in your oven if they didn’t arrive warm enough. As they’re experienced at home delivery, labelling is particularly good, so if you have anyone with food allergies or intolerances in your household, they’ll be able to eat safely.
We opted for crisp football-shaped Lamb Kebbeh ($9/5) that eat well with hummus, pastry-wrapped Lamb Sambousik ($9/5) that went well with garlic dip, and everyone’s favourite Falafel ($9/5) that ate best with labne and chilli.
Each item comes with its own dip, so you don’t really need to add on dips like Labne ($5). If you do make the same mistake I did, the yoghurt-based dip eats very well stirred through with dill or zaatar on roast spuds for dinner. Freshly made Tabouli ($9.50) is the right accompaniment for this sort of meal, with bright, lemony sharpness that cuts through the tongue-coating oiliness of eating deep-fried food.
In terms of pizzas, Manoosh make both traditional Lebanese pizzas, and the pepperoni-studded cheesy Italian sort. Wanting to stay thematic, I opted for the former in the guise of the Meat Pizza-Folded ($8). Arriving wrapped in paper, our lahembajin isn’t as crisp as I’d like it to be, but again could be warmed up in the oven to dry it out a little if you happen to be less hungry than we were.
The only real misstep on this meal were the Baklava ($3.50/each) that were slightly burnt on the bottom layer, leading to a bitterness that permeated the whole pastry. An easy mistake, but best to throw that tray away.
Manoosh Pizzeria
170 Enmore Road, Enmore
Ph: (02) 9550 6606
NOTE: You can see a previous review for this venue back HERE.