Merrylands’ hot brunch spot serves a breakfast board loaded with the lot

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For the past dozen or so years, the most popular restaurant I’ve regularly visited in Merrylands, near Parramatta, has been Kabul House – a place of barbecued meats and lamb stock-bolstered rice, qabili palaw. Kids play under tables. Old blokes share skewers next to a large-format photo of Mazar-i-Sharif’s Blue Mosque. There’s an incredible amount of bread. Kabul House is still hugely popular in the suburb, but the place young families and Zoomers are really flocking to lately is Iftar.

The modern Middle Eastern restaurant feels more like a dining-room in cashed-up Dubai than anything on Merrylands’ main streets. Interior designer Matt Woods, who also has Grandfathers in the CBD and Newtown’s Mister Grotto in his portfolio, has merged recycled timber and hand-made bricks with cork, marble, travertine and clay to create a striking space that still feels inviting. Founder Jeremy Agha’s cooking, meanwhile, rises to the fitout.

I can’t overstate how impressive the space and its surrounding red-brick courtyard are.

Iftar opened last year at Mason & Main, a new residential and retail complex across from a Stockland shopping centre and its ecosystem of discount stores. Built by Coronation Property, Mason & Main is something of a flagship precinct for The Western Sydney of Tomorrow, a place where mid-century housing commission homes are being replaced with luxury apartments. Opinions on this gentrification are varied, and I’m not sure how I feel about it myself, which is partly why I’ve taken so long to visit Iftar.

I was also put off by the promise of “shawarma tacos” which – in my experience in Australia – should be approached with the same caution as prawns on a pizza. But those tacos, it turns out, are delicious: slow-cooked lamb, pickled onion and tahini on crisp and slightly puffy tortillas. I was reminded of eating a spiced Moroccan lamb pie more than anything found on a street corner in Mexico.

You can team those tacos with a bowl of garlic-forward ful medames bean stew and leave happy and nourished, but with enough appetite to still buy a herbed potato-filled sambooseh from Persian Bakery to eat in the car (essential Merrylands snacking).

Agha grew up working in his family’s Lebanese bakery, and says Iftar is a homage to his mum’s recipes. Crisp and tangy sourdough zaatar manoush is at the centre of a breakfast board loaded with fried eggs, more of that ful, labneh, cold-cuts, assorted pickles, fresh vegies and village cheeses.

Fried pita textures a refreshing fattoush salad that’s best mates with juicy, well-seasoned harissa-spiced chicken shish skewers or autumn-crisp lamb and pine nut-filled “cigars”.

Blistered, wood-fired bread comes in handy for the Malfroy’s wild honey that sweetens pan-fried halloumi with caramelised figs and walnuts.

A young floor team is happy to guide newcomers through the menu and drinks list, which is booze-free and juice-heavy (go for the mint and lemon crush). Complimentary tap water would be nice, though: I’m told that, if I want water, I need to buy a $5 bottle of Antipodes Still. Because Iftar isn’t licensed, it doesn’t legally have to provide free water, but, you know, come on.

Otherwise, Agha is doing all the right things to build on tradition and create something new. And I can’t overstate how impressive the space and its surrounding red-brick courtyard are. Other Western Sydney developers, the ones responsible for those plastic-box buildings that hack bluntly into the street and sky, would do well to take note.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.