Shane Delia’s Layla is a Middle Eastern brunch marquee
Shane Delia takes his take on Middle Eastern brunch to the streets with his new pop-up in the heart of the city.
Food
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Melbourne has reawakened with a roar. Doesn’t it sound great?
Who knows how our collective lockdown experience will manifest over the months to come in the Victorian character, but for now there’s a real sense of community accomplishment, that we blitzed “our Blitz” and have come through stronger, or at the very least, different.
And that’s evident on our streets, as our restaurants in the city and across our suburbs spill onto footpaths and take over carparks and even shut down streets. Seemingly everywhere you look there are couples and groups, families and friends seeing each other IRL (in real life) for the first time in months, or even all year, and the joy in the air is palpable and … what’s an acceptable post-lockdown synonym for infectious? Whatever, it feels so good to be out and about.
And it’s not just us diners who are happy to be back. Waiters and bar staff and chefs and managers, whose vocation is to look after people, are glad to be doing just that again. That’s certainly the case here.
While Shane Delia’s subterranean glamour den, Maha, has only recently reopened, he’s embracing the city’s new-found alfresco focus in the only way he knows how — wholeheartedly — and has taken over Bond Street outside with a Middle Eastern marquee pop-up, Layla.
Though meaning “night” in Arabic (and serving souffras for dinner and lunch) we’re here by day for Delia’s first crack at Melbourne’s world-famed brunch.
And the morning banquet, offered on weekends, is a very excellent way to get reintroduced to the city if it’s been some time since you breached the Hoddle Grid.
Offering both access to and protection from the elements, it’s a functionally handsome space where strings of glowing Edison globes, planter box greenery and glamorous bunches of blooms is all that’s really needed to transform tent into terrific. Delia’s no slouch when it comes to details, so chairs are comfortable, tables are clothed, napkins are linen and glassware naturally elegant. Brunch is a set four-course affair and, at $45 a head, great value for the fab feast ahead.
You’ll probably want to celebrate freedom with a glass of “morning booze” and the saffron-spiked mimosa ($18) is a Middle East-via-Manhattan scene-setter.
The first round of mezze flies fast out of the mobile kitchen, with warmed flatbread on rip-and-scoop duties for a terrific almond and crème fraiche “hummus”, with peppery raw radishes, crunchy cucumber batons and witlof canoes happy plate mates. A bowl of warmed olives with good chilli heat join a tomato salad sprinkled with candied olives, and roasted eggplant topped with mint and pomegranate pearls.
Manoushi — Lebanese pizza pies — hot from the oven come topped with za’atar and filled with cheese, while squares of haloumi are wrapped in fine kataifi pastry fried crisp and finished with Aleppo honey for a power-packed mouthful of sweet cheesy crunch. Also very good: the sticky onion jam lifted with cumin that’s the bed for cinnamon-spiced Lebanese sausages.
Powerful toum — blitzed raw garlic — adds unmistakeable heft to lemon-dressed asparagus spears that retain satisfying crunch as part of the next course, which also features a fried egg on a wodge of Baker Bleu sourdough grilled, oiled and topped with crumbed sujuk (another type of sausage).
But it’s the fabulous fattet — a salad of shards of toasted pita with smoked trout and chickpeas, pine nuts, mint and blitzed almonds — that’s best of the brunch.
Granola with saffron peaches and yoghurt, and watermelon cubes with cinnamon labne finish the feast with a touch of sweet, with ice-cold grapes the simple and perfect full stop.
Offering a generous and uniquely Middle Eastern way to start the day, for a brunch that stops traffic set the GPS to Bond Street.
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