Mankoushe

When brothers Jad and Hady Choucair​ were growing up in southern Lebanon they lived in a small one-room house which was effectively all kitchen. "You could never escape the aromas," says Jad, who credits the all-pervading proximity with the family's activities at Mankoushe, a four-year-old restaurant which serves modest but delicious and truly seasonal food from all over the Middle East.

Jad is the chef, Hady is the baker, pulling well-wrought pastries and pizza from a domed, wood-fired oven. The boys' mother, Gisele, an Iraqi, is the soul of the restaurant and often in the kitchen. Many of the dishes here are based on recipes Gisele's mother wrote in a notebook that is now the Mankoushe treasure trove.

One such dish is a reworking of batata bil sayneeyeh, a tray bake of potatoes, which can also contain burgul and walnuts. The Brunswick version is a sturdy but piquant dumpling with a casing made of potato and burgul paste. It's stuffed with a chopped walnut mixture flavoured with onion, garlic and pomegranate molasses.

Mankoushe's menu is market-driven. No, really. Many restaurants trumpet their seasonality but not every chef busts out of the kitchen to fondle the eggplant or inspect the spinach before buying it.

These guys browse Brunswick Market daily; they also have a beehive on the roof, herbs in the backyard and a network of local composters to deal with their scraps. The eggs and meat are free-range and it's also easy to eat here as a vegan.

Weekend breakfast might be spiced rhubarb with labna or breakfast pizza with fried egg. Lunches are mostly baked stuff. At dinner, the menu magnifies: there are snacks (oysters with chermoula​ spice paste), bakes (chickpea-stuffed eggplant) and many tempting vegetables (tahini-braised silverbeet, cardamom carrots with orange and lentils).

Lamb and goat are the go-to meats; you might have raw lamb in a hand-pounded and creamy kibbeh. I ate braised lamb neck, cooked so long it pulled from the bone in sweet strands.

Rich, tomato-stained lamb sausage might turn up on one of the light, airy pizzas – the canny combination of loin and shoulder meat comes via a sausage guy in Turkey that Jad got talking to.

Mankoushe started next door as a pizza place; this offshoot opened four years ago and has now supplanted its progenitor.

That it's BYO (licence and upstairs bar pending) and cash only (Eftpos soon-ish) are clues to the casual nature of the experience.

The focus is firmly on the food, which can come out at a rather leisurely pace, and may at times be plonked on your table with a distracted air. Don't worry – you can still taste the love in it.

Rating: Three and a half stars (out of five)