Teta Mona is now a licensed venue

During last year’s lockdowns, Teta Mona answered the call for an at-home restaurant experience, supplying Lebanese soul food just like grandma made to the homes of hungry Melburnians.

Indeed, owners Antoine and Bechara Taouk did such a bang-up job with take out and delivery packs that they were voted by Time Out readers as Melbourne’s Favourite At-Home Restaurant Experience (Casual Gems) in the Time Out Bar & Restaurant Revive Awards – no mean feat up against 16 other contenders.

Now, after eight years of operation, Teta Mona has secured something they’ve always wanted: a liquor licence. At their Brunswick East premises they are now serving organic, biodynamic and Fairtrade-certified wines from Couvent Rouge Winery in Bekka Valley, a high-altitude region of Lebanon. 

They also have Fighting Gully Road Pinot Noir from Mornington and Holly’s Garden pinot gris from Whitlands. A glass of the Holly’s Garden UberBrut sparkling, the brothers say, goes well with a selection of dips at the start of a Teta Mona meal.

For beer fans there’s Victoria’s Furphy as well as Almaza, an iconic Lebanese beer has the same name as the Taouks’ mother. 

“Growing up between Australia and Lebanon, we were in between two worlds throughout our childhood,” says Bechara.  

He says that uniting these two worlds was a natural thing for them and Teta Mona was the result: “a restaurant based on our Lebanese background and our grandmother (Teta) Mona's food and cooking methods, brought into the modern lifestyle and diet of Melbourne.” 

As well as at-home packs, another consequence of the pandemic was the twin brothers branching out into catering weddings and other events, a service they continue to offer (contact them via socials or give them a call for catering enquiries). Or simply drop in for some of Melbourne’s most popular Lebanese food seven nights a week. 

Make sure you order some samboosek bi jebné – delicate triangles of pastry filled with halloumi and feta – and some beitenjan meshwi, oven-baked eggplant topped with Gibran's (the twins' dad's) toum garlic crème, capsicum salsa and pepita seeds. 

Teta Mona is at 100a Lygon St, Brunswick East. Read Time Out's review here.