Habayib Lebanese Restaurant

THE Virgo in me insists that the hangers in the wardrobe face the same way, but it's my Cancer side that demands a booking for dinner. This, however, is becoming increasingly hard with so many of the city's cool places adopting a no-bookings policy. It's something that seems prejudiced against us suburban types who can't get there early enough to bag a table, or who have a limited window for dinner because of the babysitter.

Young people, damn their carefree eyes, don't have these concerns, and in an effort to see if I can adopt some of their behaviours I decide to freefall on the booking front for a night. Just to go with the flow and see where the current of the night takes us. Tonight "us" is me and the Prahran Puma, a woman of a certain age intimately familiar with the young men I am trying to emulate from her former time prowling the clubs of 3181 looking for dates whose mothers are younger than she is.

The projected target for dinner is somewhere in the north that is busy on a Tuesday night and still serving at 9.30pm. Mon Ami is full and Bistro Flor is shut. She suggests a couple of places in Lygon Street frequented by young suits, but I fear the food is not the attraction there, despite the fact that she now wears a belt that matches her shoes - a sign of stability in a woman, she says.

Things aren't looking promising. We're still cruising when I remember an email tip for a homely joint called Habayib that has Lebanese grannies in the kitchen. These have been a weakness of mine since I first ate Abla's food, but I've scoped out Habayib a few times and it's always been quieter than a mouse in especially puffy slippers.

Tonight, however, this 20-month-old Lebanese cafe, with its cream walls, linear table arrangement and wood floors, is jumping, and there is just one small table for two in the corner by the kitchen.

Our $35 banquet delivered with foreign-student enthusiasm nimbly touches all the usual bases. A fine-grained hummus and samboosik of flaky pastry rolled around lamb mince and pine nuts are high spots among a flurry of little plates. The main course is a platter of skewers - slightly hard lamb, chicken thighs and kafta, where the spiced ground lamb pressed around skewers had a good balance of the classic Lebanese seven-spice-mix spicing. They come on cinnamon-kissed and buttered rice that could turn you vego.

Next time we still might just graze the mezze dishes - for their sbanegh wa jebni (pyramid pastries filled with onion, spinach and haloumi) are as good as the flaky meat cigars, their little lamb snags (makanek) are super-juicy, and this is one of the few occasions where I'd suggest you order that cafe staple, the dips.

I drop the Puma back in Prahran, and before she slinks away she drops her second-best line of the night: "I can't understand people with money letting themselves go but then not having lipo ..." The door slams before I can riposte that another trait of Cancerians is that we really hate being jabbed by loads of needles.