Man'oushe Restaurant, Stellenbosch

 21 June 2022

 

Man’oushe

14 Andringa Street, Stellenbosch

 

I never cease to marvel at how different the vibey, contemporary Stellenbosch is to the dusty small town I saw disappear in the proverbial rear-view mirror in about 1984. One is absolutely spoilt for choice in the CBD if peckishness strikes and you’re looking for a walk-in table.

 

The wife and I have  eaten in Stellenbosch quite a bit over the past weeks, but today I was on a solo mission and wandered around town once the business had been concluded, looking for that certain something until I saw the beckoning, striking, pavement-covering canopy of Man’oushe, which has been on the Stellenbosch list for ages, yet we’d never gotten around to it, so this was that day for me.

 

I chose a table on the covered pavement. The restaurant looks luxurious and ultra-stylish, quite festive indeed, and not how I would’ve pictured a Lebanese restaurant but, then, I’ve not been to Lebanon and for all I know, this is the authentic deal. Gas heaters supplied warmth on a cold, overcast day.  It’s quite a feature that the dining space intrudes onto the pavement to the extent that it’s been fully incorporated into the eatery and there’s no thoroughfare for pedestrians anymore.  It must be a necessity because the quite large bar and service counter inside  makes the interior dinning space quite cramped.

 

Everywhere in the vicinity, though, restaurants and cafés have outside tables on the rather narrow pavements to  create that bustling European feel.

 

I thought I’d have a light meal of mezze but though I ordered a limited number of dishes the quantity turned out to be quite daunting. 

 

I drank an espresso (R26) and ordered labneh (R99), hummus (R71) and haloumi (R114.)  On the menu, it says that the first two dishes come with bread, and I asked my waiter to give me just one portion of bread, instead of two, but given the quantity of supremely excellent flat bread I did get, it might as well have been two portions.

 

The bread was a love child of roti and pita, with the size  and texture of the former and the pcckety layers of the latter. It’s the type of flat bread I could easily gorge myself on.

 

Not only did I get bread on the plate with the labneh and hummus, but there were also olives,  a sambal kind of thing and, undiscovered until the very end, slices of tomato and salad leaves under the mound of flatbread. Loved the hummus and the dense, rich texture of the labneh and could almost not get enough of the flatbread.

 

The haloumi dish was a monster. Six batons of grilled cheese resting on slices of tomato, with more olives and other salady bits and bobs. I’m very fond of grilled Haloumi and its dry, slightly rubbery texture but there was so much of it, combined with the other food, that the cheese was cold by the time I was halfway through my meal, and it got to the point where I was kind of grimly slogging through the Haloumi plate rather than enjoying it.

 

 These three dishes were far too much for one person. I abandoned some of the flatbread, some hummus, all of the tomato and leaves under the flatbreads and about half of  the salad elements with the Haloumi. I wasn’t brought up to leave food on the plate and believe in waste not, want not, but this was a case of impossibility.  

 

The dishes aren’t cheap (and this is my observation of the menu items generally) but if one considers that each one would be more than enough for two people, the value for money increases.

 

The total bill, before tip, came to R310,00.

 

The food was excellent, the coffee really good and the service friendly and efficient.

 

Next time, I’ll bring a friend.