A1 Lebanese Bakery

Our north side gem! I have been here multiple times, and I always leave feeling satisfied. Finally tried the pizza and asked the staff for recommendations — it was between the Garlic Chicken or Sausage, and we chose the latter. Suffice to say, I was smiling from ear-​to-​ear with every bite. Koodos for the great recommendation, it’s one of the best pizzas I’ve indulged in (photo attached).
We also ordered the half-​and-​half platter this time (photo also attached) and absolutely loved everything on it, including the tahini dip. I’m glad they expanded the seating space to make way for more eat-​ins. You can also grab freshly baked flat bread and a selection of groceries here. A1 gets 5-​stars from me, and I will keep going back.

It’s my first time trying out Lebanese food and I think it’s awesome. It’s actually a bakery so I got to try different kinds of pastries. I especially love the tomato pizza. The bread it’s really soft and fluffy. And for a pizza it’s just minimal toppings, not like your conventional ones with oil and cheese on top. It’s really light and nice.
We too ordered 2 spinach pastries. Sorry I do not know the real name of these food, but feel free to check out the photos I’ve posted for more info.
So there is one spinach pastry with cheese, which is creamy and wrap in the same light airy bread. The other one is without cheese which has a sour tangy taste. Both tasted great.
We too had another pizza with is filled with olives, tomatoes, cucumber and cheese spread. That’s just something I’ve never tasted before. It’s totally not like our conventional pizza.
We too ordered a bowl of pickles, which is turnips in pink colour, and cucumber and olives. I wails say the pink turnips tasted a lot like our Chinese pickle that we cooked soup with.
To end it we had some sweets called baklava. They are a kind of puff pastry but has a chewy texture and it’s sweet and awesome.
To end it we had a cup of hot latte in such a cold weather. It’s just awesomeness!

Falafel wrap is nothing special but gotta be best cheese pie outside of Georgia (where they call them khachapuri).

I am a regular at A1 — freshly baked light pastry at a cheap price. Brunswick institution and for good reason, no thrills but delivers better then any other hyped pompous place … The best in Melb for Turkish pies

We decided to get out of our normal ‘hood and randomly explore Sydney Rd in Brunswick — what an unexpected delight. And A-​1 is not to be missed! Ridiculously cheap and tasty and filling — no matter what you try: the flavourful za’atar with veggies, or the labneh pizza, or the falafel.
The cafeteria style layout is all part of the charm. You will spend mere pennies for this incredible feast and will crave it for days to come.

A1 has some of the best flatbreads and dips going, as well as a great range of those hard to find grains and spices (notably, freekeh and za’atar, as well as burghul). The prices are eye popping – in a good way.
Get a za’atar pizza, and while you’re there grab some flatbread and labne for fattening yourself up at home.

Love it! Fresh, authentic and super cheap

A Brunswick institution that dishes out Lebanese pizzas and pastries bursting with flavour… for $ 3. I don’t think I need to say any more.
(Except that the staff are delightful, the atmosphere homely and it also doubles as a Middle Eastern grocery.)

I went to the A1 Bakery for the first time today and I was very very very impressed! Not only is the food very good quality, it is also unbelieveably cheap!
The cheese and spinach bureks/​pastry squares/​spanikopitas/​whatever else you might want to call them are delicious and use real spinach (rather than thawed out once frozen crap) and very nice salty fetta cheese! The pastry is cooked just the right amount to make it delicious! Not greasy or burned and not undercooked either.
The hot chocolate is good and the babycinos were apparently very nice (according to my 3 year old twins). What I also liked was that the coffee maker actually made them up in front of my twins so they also got some education into how to make babycinos as well as the opportunity to drink them.
The place is busy and friendly with a nice energy about it. There are lots of Australian flags mixed in with the Lebanese theme — presumably in order to come accross as welcoming to the whole community rather than just the Lebanese community (although the inclusiveness is very obvious anyway with or without the flags).
The tables are wooden as well as little and cute. So its very cozy sitting there although its also quite easy to bump your legs.
I was close to giving this place 5 stars, but they got our order slightly wrong and at one point we couldnt work out if we had been undercharged or overcharged — but mistakes like that can happen anywhere on any given day.
All in all a great place to eat and I certainly intend to keep going back!

It’s only been two and a half years since I moved to Melbourne, but already in that short time, A1 has become my staple for all things Levantine: groceries and utensils, piping hot lahm b’ajeen (meat flatbread), and a dose of funny Arabisms that remind me of home.
Much has been said about the freshly baked meat, zaatar, shanklish, spinach/​feta and sausage pies. It’s all true. Everything is delicious, baked fresh and tastes like your Lebanese/​Palestinian/​Syrian/​Jordanian grandmother made it.
If you’re interested in cooking Middle Eastern food, A1 is a great place to stock up on your basics. Head straight to the first grocery aisle and stock up on big bags of bulgur, freekeh, cous cous or dried lentils (red or brown/​green) of your choice; double the quantity than supermarkets’ and about half the price. In the third or fourth aisle, find your rose and orange blossom waters, fig jams, oil-​packed tuna and beans (like hummus and foul medammas). Dairy items (yogurt, labne, halloumi, feta, goats’, farmers’ and shanklish) are found in the back fridges. Then to your left, frozen kubbeh, sambousek pastries, and falafel to fry up at home.
But really, no stop at A1 is complete if you haven’t walked out with a stack of their fresh Arabic bread. It is exactly as it should be: thin and pillowy soft, perfect for tearing and scooping, and toasting. The supermarket brands are imitators. This is the real thing.
Yes the bathrooms are dodgy and way out the back of the building. Yes the pickled turnips look radioactive. Yes there’s the odd smattering of beauty products that never should have been created. But if you’re looking for a bit of authentic Arabana, so to speak, this is a very good place to get it.

A1 bakery is one of my all time favourite places to eat. Growing up, we’d make the trip to Sydney Road every Saturday afternoon for spinach, meat and cheese pastries.
Baked fresh while you wait, the food at A1 is cheap, filling and appetising. I usually order a spinach and a meat, on the odd occasion opting for the sausage pizza option instead.
There are also plenty of Lebanese goods to choose from, however be cautious, some of these are not fresh. I purchased some borghul today and it was infested with little black bugs.

A1 is probably the best place in Brunswick for a cheap breakfast.
You cannot go past one of the cheese pies and the lamb pizza is also delicious. You’ll always have plenty of change from $ 10 after eating here and you’ll be completely full of delicious Lebanese baked goods.
You can also buy uncooked pizzas and pies which means you can have some A1 anytime you want.

I’m giving A1 Lebanese Bakery 5 stars for their really awesome flatbread and baklava.
1. Flatbread:
I admit that I do quite like Anthony Bourdain and when he raved about A1, I made it a mission to visit this place. The flatbread at this place, oh my goodness, is the best I’ve ever had. I got the meat pizza which was flatbread served with ground meat. Served warm, the flatbread was slightly crispy on the outside, and soft and light in texture.
2. Baklava:
I believe I’ve possibly found the best baklava. As you know, baklava is made with a million layers of phyllo pastry that are so thin that you really can’t see the individual layers anymore once they are brushed with rose syrup water in between layers. At A1, a bite into the baklava, you can actually see the individual paper-​thin layers of phyllo dough. This means that at each bite I could also feel the pastry itself instead of just chewing and biting into layers of phyllo that are just stuck together like how it is at other places.
My husband had the falafel which he seemed to really enjoy. I was more interested in the bright purple radish pickle that came with the falafel. By the way, the bright purple radish purple was good.
We really like how local this place feels. When even older Middle Eastern men come here to hang out, you know that A1 is good.

The falafel platter is great, four crispy, crunchy falafel with a smooth chickpea filling. Served with bread, salads, gherkin and pink turnip you can make yourself up a little falafel wrap and don’t forget to dip it in the gorgeous tahini sauce — YUM!

So everyone will tell you about eating A1’s Lebanese pizza. But I bet they don’t tell you that Melbourne’s top Middle Eastern Chefs like Greg Malouf of MoMo have pita and other breads made for their restaurants by these guys.
Me? I go to stock up on spice like za’atar, ras el hanout and various Levantine grocery. Then I raid the freezer for ‘those ground lamb pizzas’ to eat at my leisure, along with bags of handmade Samboussek dumplings and kibbeh. In the fridge I raid the balls of fresh cheese — labne and shanklish — as well as freshly made dips, haloumi and goats cheese.
I resist the urge to buy a mini shashlik barbecue, fluoro pink pickled turnips, a case of wacky soft drink, or packet mix mahalebieh pudding. Enroute to the check out I pick up a big bag of fairy floss and the best pita in town, before grabbing a coffee and baklava with Mr Sticki, who is chowing into their Sujuk (sausage) pizza with its vaguely sweet base. Outside, hipsters sit alongside retired men watching the traffic grind down Sydney Road while they smoke and sip coffee.

Brunswick, if you haven’t noticed, seems like it’s about to be the next Fitzroy… maybe I shouldn’t say that… maybe Fitzroy is the old Brunswick…
Anyway, there are some gems, including A1 Bakery. It always smells fresh baked, like you’re standing IN the oven. MMMMM.
One word for ya: HaloumiCheesePies… or is that three?
Seriously, whoever dreamt this up, should get a Nobel. You get the grilled smoky flavor, but with more than just cheese, so it tricks you into thinking it’s a complete meal. YUM.

Haloumi in a pie… What can I say? It’s all you really want in life. And for $ 3! This makes A1 Bakery one of the best value snack stops around. The Lebanese pizza menu is also really worth taste-​testing. The «meat pizza» is a thin spread of a paste-​like minced meat (I’m assuming it’s beef, but does it really matter?) with a herby-​lemony zing to it. The meat is fairly pink and seems only barely cooked, so if you veer towards vegetarian normally, this might be a little scary for you. In which case, be sure to order the vegetarian pizza, which is more expensive (at $ 7 vs $ 3), but definitely gets my pick. It’s a whole world of flavour.

A1 is the Northern suburbs hangover cure spot from hell. It’s easy: purchase on sausage pizza (carnivore) or cheese pie (herbivore); add chilli to taste; grab a cool beverage from the chiller or get them to whip you up a take-​away coffee; race home as quickly as possible; cut pizza/​pie into segments (preferably folded in half); eat while standing in front of miscellaneous movie/​sports/​crap on television. If that doesn’t cure your woes, then you are probably going to die.
A1’s shelves are absolutely rammed to the rafters with amazing pickles/​dried and Middle Eastern delights. The one stinker about the place is that they don’t stock the bread they use for the pizza bases. That stuff would be a gold mine if they flicked em off — it’s just so hard to find decent pizza-​base-​style bread. They do stock their own Pita bread though, and it does kinda rule. Don’t worry if they’re a bit surly… they deal with hung-​over meat-​heads all weekend.

A1 Bakery is an absolute Melbourne institution. Whether you’re from Toorak or Thomastown, chances are you’ve sampled one of their amazing traditional wood-​fired Lebanese pizzas. Standing proudly at the far end of Sydney Road, this place pretty much sums up all that is good about Brunswick: amazing Lebanese food at even more amazing prices.
People travel from all over the city to get to this place and deservedly so. Opened in 1992, A1 is a family-​run Lebanese bakery that offers savouries, pastries and Middle Eastern groceries. Must-​tries are the spinach and ricotta pie and zataar and lamb pizzas. All are best served with lemon and chilli flakes. And for those with something of a sweet tooth, don’t miss the baclava. Grab a seat if you can, and enjoy your meal while listening to the latest Middle Eastern tunes.

Seeing the masses rush for flat bread on Saturday mornings is a sight to be seen. It’s good, and cheap, but the energy put to grabbing at the last bags of it for the day is a little mind blowing.
Larger than most of the other Lebanese bakeries on Sydney Rd, here you’ll find a selection of bread goods, from pizza to ‘pie’ (folded bread), both in meat and vegetarian options. There is also a supermarket section from which you can find all manner of Lebanese delicacies and staples.
Weekends are the busier days; many patrons tying up their dog outside or joining them in the sunshine in the seating provided.