The Moor's Head
The kitchen's own word for what it makes is inauthentic pizza, and it means manoushe, the Lebanese round, and the long boat-shaped pide.
Why go
Joseph Abboud opened this on High Street in 2011 as his second room after Rumi, and the format has not been copied much since (Broadsheet). Manoushe is the everyday Lebanese flatbread, baked fast and eaten folded; pide is longer and often turned up at the sides like a canoe. Both come out with toppings that read nothing like an Italian menu: minced chicken with garlic, green olives and roquette on one, minced beef with fresh tomato, chilli, almonds and lemon on another, pumpkin with tahini, dukkah and parsley on the vegetable one. The name refers to the still that Middle Eastern arak is made in. The wine list is two whites and two reds, and the beer is Lebanese and Turkish. It trades seven nights a week and takes bookings on the phone.
Order this / avoid
- Order: the Sultan Mehmet pide, which comes loaded with tomato, lamb ma'anek, red pepper, feta and black olives. Fred the Deaf if you want the chicken one. Istanbuli for the vegetable version. The feast if there are enough of you, since it finishes with Turkish delight and mint tea.
- Avoid: turning up at lunchtime, since it is dinner only from 5.30pm. Looking for a High Street shopfront; the entrance is round the back of 774.
What locals & experts say
- Amy Collins, Concrete Playground: "It's pizza given a Lebanese twist and it's good folks, it's really good." The page carries no publication date, so this cannot be dated and is the only line of judgment on the food that could be reached. ref
- Broadsheet, 2011, on the format: it is "a proper Lebanese pizza restaurant and is in every expected sense, a step up from the takeaway pizza norm". That page is fifteen years old and is used here for history rather than as a current verdict. ref
- The gap, stated plainly. No dated review of this kitchen from the last three years could be found, and no Melbourne chef names it across 74 industry picks. Whether Joseph Abboud is still involved is unverified, so this entry treats his connection as history.
Good to know
- Where: 2/774 High Street, Thornbury, with the entrance at the rear of the building.
- Sites: two. There is a separate Moor's Head in Carlton under the same brand, and this row is the Thornbury premises. No Carlton coverage was used as evidence here, because a sibling's review is not about this address.
- Timing: dinner seven nights, from 5pm.
- Booking: phone bookings. The venue warns it may hand you a sitting time when it is busy.
- Website: the venue's working page is the Squarespace one. The older themoorshead.com address now redirects to an unrelated site and should not be used.
- Hygiene: Victoria publishes no consumer-facing food-hygiene rating, so there is no Australian equivalent of an FSA score to record.
Jeff's take (his words)
Nothing. Melbourne has no _src saved-places export in this repo, so no Jeff note stands behind this row. The master CSV's za'atar and sujuk flatbreads appear in no source consulted here and are not repeated above.
Verdict (Chef Jeff ladder)
could-visit — The kitchen calls what it makes inauthentic pizza, and it means manoushe, the Lebanese round, and the longer pide. Toppings run to minced chicken with garlic, green olives and roquette, or minced beef with chilli, almonds and lemon, or pumpkin with tahini and dukkah. The name comes from the still used to make arak. It has been on High Street since 2011, it opens seven nights, and the site takes bookings by phone. That is the case for going. The case against ranking it higher is the record: the only descriptive coverage is from 2011, the one line of judgment carries no date, and nobody can currently establish who runs the kitchen. Joseph Abboud opened it as his second venue after Rumi, and whether that connection still holds is unverified. Good local dinner in Thornbury; not a reason to cross town until somebody has eaten there and written it down.