Gebran Lebanese Cuisine — Restaurant in Sydney

My dining companion was half joking when he said, “I bet he owns the winery too.” We’re seated in Gebran Lebanese Cuisine, a Mount Lewis stalwart for more than two decades. He’s referring to owner, John Gebran, who incidentally did, in 2021, purchase the Goulburn winery, Kingsdale, that dominates the succinct wine list. We’re actually dining next door to the main restaurant—once designated as Padrino Italian, but swept up into the popularity of the rustic North Lebanese. Gebran also owns Aji, the neighbouring Japanese (his “second favourite cuisine”). You can order food from both restaurants in either of them.

The cooking methods at Gebran are simple—the same as you’d find in old-school rural Lebanese kitchens—where all of the animal is in play. Scooped up in branded flatbread, hlaywat ($26)—pan-seared sweetbreads in lemon, garlic and parsley—is a great exemplar. It eats well with the reasonably-priced Kingdale Chardonnay ($45). Creamy lamb shawarma-topped hommos ($18) arrives faster than you can ask, ‘where is our food?’ Labneh harrah ($16)—where strained yogurt (labneh) is gently combined with spicy red chili paste (harissa), almonds and pistachio—was new to me. It suited being wrapped up in flatbread with pickles ($5) and grilled meats from the mixed grill ($38/6). The barbecued lamb, chicken and kafta skewers also come with a pot of garlic sauce. You can also get split jumbo king prawns ($13/each) if you prefer a seafood feast to a land-based one. The only miss on our table-wide spread was the Gebran salad ($20) where lettuce—topped with golden nuggets of deep-fried halloumi—was limp...

I visited Gebran on Saturday night for a birthday party. There were 4 plates of dips, tabouli and kibe ALREADY on the table when we arrived and that was all we got for the next 3 hours. Everytime we asked the waiter why all other tables had multiple variations of mezza his response was "why what do you want?" At one stage we asked him for the veggie plate next to the kibe nayeh and he still pretended he didnt know what we were talking about until we pointed it out at another table and he reached over and got it for us from the other table. There is a huge focus on those tables whom the "regular casanovas" sit at with waiters going back and forth adding mezza variations and replenishing plates. Most of us got up to leave at 11pm, we still didnt get any BBQ or fried mezza, when we asked what we had to pay we were told $65pp we were shocked, not because we didnt want to pay but because we had 1 plate to share of labneh, humous, baba ghanooj and tabouli for $65 EACH. We had already paid for our drinks. In comparison to your competitors Masaya ($55pp including drinks) and Atlantis on the Bay ($45pp including drinks) those places have a huge variation of mezza such as humous, baba ghanooj, labneh, shankleesh, feta, rocket salad, fatoosh, tabouli, hot chips, fried kibe and samboosek, sausages, fried cauliflower, samkeh hara, kibe nayeh (with its side veggies) falefel etc and the quality of their food is so much better. I still cant believe our table of 10 paid $650 for 8 plates of mediocre mezzas and we spent a couple of hundred ontop for drinks. We couldve gone to beirut with that money. Really...

Food was not flavoursome. It felt like a market place, we were put in the nosiest area, it was too cramped, and the food came in four different times. The prawns came out first, which were actually delicious. This is why this review got one star for food. But the skewers took 15 minutes after the prawns to come out, but then it took a complete hour just for the mansaf to come out, and it was entirely too chewy and the rice still having zum in it. We then added fattoush to the order, but then it didn't come until we decided to tell the waiter (that didn't come until we called him to our table after 20 minutes of waiting when we came in), to cancel the fattoush. Only for the waiter, a dark blonde, to tell us 'You didn't order fattoush.' LIKE YES WE DID! JUST 25 MINUTES AFTER THE SKEWERS CAME! Is it now illegal to add to the order?! ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE SERVICE! They didn't smile, they didn't check on us, they favoured other customers just because they knew them more and because they looked more Arab (we're Lebanese mind you), and full on ignored me when they came back out to the front just to talk to other customers, WHEN I HAD ALREADY ASKED THEM TO CHECK ON MY MANSAF AND WHY IT WAS TAKING SO LONG! I will Never come here again. It got so bad, we had to leave early, didn't even consider dessert. And my mum, which we came for mother's day dinner, had to tell the server to his face how terrible the experience was and that's when he said what I mentioned previously. Absolutely disgraceful. Please, save your money, your peace, and your comfort; pick...