Mullet Cafe

PROFILED BY DE GROOTS MEDIA
This is a small, totally unpretentious gem of a place with inside and outside tables, great views over the surfers and sun-takers at Park Beach, and Lebanese food of a quality seldom seen outside of the ethnic enclaves of our capital cities. James Barker who, together with his mother Lee, is the owner, cook, waiter and bottle-washer, says he wants to keep everything very simple with the really strong Middle Eastern flavours he grew up with; the sort of food that played such an important part in his life.

Accordingly, you select from a menu written on butcher’s paper, order and pay at the counter, sit at un-clothed tables and service is beach-side relaxed. Then the procession of exciting flavours start – a mezze selection of subtle and creamy hummus bi tahina; lemony, garlicky, smoky baba ghanoush; tomatoes and white onion salad spiked with sumac; seductively flavoured loubia made to his grandmother’s recipe; and Iraqi chicken hauntingly flavoured with crumbled dried lemons. That’s just for starters. Then, of course, there’s all-day coffee plus classic Middle Eastern sweetmeats, typically tooth-tingling, rich and all quite wonderful.

Graeme Phillips