Fifi's

It can be a tough life if you don’t eat meat. Finding decent vegetarian food can be a real challenge, not to mention often disappointing. There’s a ripper vegetarian meal to be had at this massively popular Lebanese stalwart.

Sure, there’s very tasty meat on the menu like the cabbage rolls stuffed with lamb and rice or chargrilled chicken skewers, if that’s the way you swing. But with dishes like warm, delicately spiced oregano potato salad or the incredibly comforting eggplant – flash fried then slow cooked in tomato puree and served on spiced rice (pilaf) – it’s easy to forget the flesh of beast.

Fifi ’s also do an excellent fattoush – that Lebanese peasant salad of crisp bread, thin cucumber slices, discs of crisp peppery radish, scattered with little shreds of lettuce and Spanish onion brightened with a lemon juice, garlic and olive oil dressing. It’s a small nondescript room but they turn tables quick snippety and the waitresses are old hands, hustling by with plates loaded with pickles and hummus as more Enmore locals (the Birkenstocks and facial piercings give ’em away every time) teem through the door for owner/chef/matriach Fifi Fudda’s falafels, which are some of the best outside of Lakemba.

There’s a fairly modest booze selection but they also have Geleb (a type of Lebanese cola which tastes a bit like plum juice) and Lebanese coffee – pure caffeine in a cup. And though the baklava has a long way to go before it’s as flaky, squishy and sticky as the ones you get way out west, short of leaving the inner sanctum of Enmore, they’re pretty damn good. Fifi ’s is one of your best bets for traditional Lebanese in the inner west. Pass the tabouleh.