The Moor’s Head

Since our last “cheesy lebanesey” pizza experience at Mankoushe with Z, I’d pretty much start drooling at the mention of pizza!! My mind reminiscing instantly of that fragrant za’atar atop that fluffy pizza base.  So like every other ‘foodie’, when we’d heard Joseph Abboud of Rumi’s had opened another establishment it was only a matter of time before we’d join the masses to try his new offering; a combination of crowd pleasing Pizza with Middle Eastern topping and flavours.  Something he called, Inauthentic Pizza  (assuming not in that gross chain establishment-lets jam as much bad cheese/sausage/bacon into the crust-Pizza kind of way… i’m not joking.  That pizza was called the German King, at Japanese Pizza Hut’s).

It’d been a while since N, Z, JP and I all had a free Friday to catch up together for a carb fest!  It had been an even longer while since somewhere we wanted to eat took bookings!  So we were all feeling pretty positive about this situation… (especially given we now had a pregnant lady in tow.  And that JP can’t wait for anything for more than 17 seconds without getting extremely agitated!)

Now from here on in, you’ll have to excuse me if I get some of the flavours mixed up… we came here so long ago I can’t remember exactly what was what.  What I can guarantee is that all 3 were meat laden flavours!

So we went with The Golden Terrace (the mammoth one to the right) – minced beef, fresh tomato, chilli, almond, lemon ($18).  The almonds on this gave it some good texture, but it could have done with more lemon and maybe more chilli…just more flavour.   The Emir Bashir II (center) which was Hummus, sujuk (sausage), fresh tomato, olives, parsley ($19) and the round one to the end is Fairuz which had Tomato, haloumi, bastourma (more meat… cured i think) and parsley ($18).  This was probably my favourite of the 3, as the bastourma was nice and salty.  Which meant my fingers finally got a break from sprinkling salt onto EVERYTHING to give it some flavour!

Greens for the night (as requested by the pregnant lady) were Cabbage, Mint soused onion, caraway($8.5) and  Roquette- Shanklees ($8).

 If you’re looking at all this thinking ‘that seems like a lot for 4’, you’re pretty right.  It was!  They were all varied in actual size, but all equally bready.  So earlier when I said we were getting our carb on, I wasn’t being sarcastic!!  Although the toppings were generous, it was hard to not be distracted by the rather chewy, dense consistency of the pide/base.

We did the best we could to finish without getting jaw lock, and I took the small window of room left in my belly as an opening for dessert before the carb-coma took hold.

Dessert was Nutella Fatayer ($9) which was served with Persian Fairy floss and a Halva and Banana Fatayer ($9).  In hindsight, probably should have just let that window close.  We were all so full we could pretty much only manage a corner of each and picked at the garnishings before we had to call it quits!! Banana and Halva though… Bit of a winner!! THAT, I would come back for!

On the whole, with the lack of flavour, and the overly chewy bases, The Moor’s Head failed to leave me wanting more…. Think i’m going to stick to the cheap and cheerful option for my future ‘cheesey Lebonesey’ cravings.