A1 Bakery's za'atar manakish from the wood-fired oven is the best A$5 meal in Brunswick: fresh thyme and sesame blend baked into Lebanese flatbread and handed across the counter at 6am to a line of Sydney Road regulars.

Lebanese-Australian families settled along the Sydney Road strip in Brunswick and Coburg from the late 1950s onward, with the heaviest migration following the Lebanese civil war from 1975. A1 Bakery was founded by Mark Khoder in 1992 on Sydney Road in Brunswick and built around a single saj-style wood-fired oven for fresh Lebanese flatbreads. The za'atar manakish became the Brunswick breakfast standard: thyme, sumac, sesame and salt blended with olive oil into a wet paste, spread on raw flatbread and baked for 90 seconds until the bread blisters and the herb oil pools. The format has not changed in 30 years; queues form at 7am.

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