Images: supplied
Noya lounge isn’t just a wine bar, nor pizza parlour or brunch spot with the girls. It’s all that under one roof on the famous foodie strip that is O’Connell Street in Adelaide’s north.
“I’m Lebanese and (my partner) is Pakistani,” owner Leah explained.
“So we’ve decided to basically open something that accommodates both of our nationalities flavour-wise, palate-wise.”
Open for a massive 17 hours a day, from 7am to 12am, Noya Lounge does breakfast, brunch, lunch, dinner, and even wood-fired pizza.
“Everything is made in-house,” Leah said. “All my desserts are in-house and I make my own pizza dough, pizza sauce, pastries, breads.”
Despite now being Noya’s head chef, Leah didn’t come to the venue through a traditional hospitality career. She is actually a medical student who began cooking through a small dessert business she ran from home.
With encouragement from her partner, that side hustle grew into what we see today.
Leah has built the menu around dishes she would want to eat herself, bringing together familiar Australian café favourites with flavours influenced by her Lebanese background and her partner’s Pakistani heritage.
She wanted the food to feel comfortable, while still offering something people might not find at the café next door.
Desserts obviously remain a major part of the offering.
“With my desserts, my plan is actually to spontaneously make things each week,” she said.
“I want to keep the basics the same, but… it could be different some weeks.”
Early standouts include a rose and pistachio milk cake, which Leah describes as light and delicate, a rich Dubai chocolate brownie finished with pistachio, and a sticky date cake that has already become one of the venue’s most popular sweets.
“We can warm them all up as well and serve them with sauce, like caramel sauce and stuff, which is really yum.”
The drinks have been given similar attention, with Noya making its refreshers and fresh juices in-house. The signature refresher menu includes the Mediterranean Sunset, rose lemonade, cucumber mint cooler and pomegranate spritz.
There’s also a range of flavoured cold foams that can be added to iced drinks, including pistachio, salted maple, orange blossom and rose vanilla.
Come morning, the menu leans into Middle Eastern and South Asian flavours with dishes including za’atar smashed avocado on toast, Noya shakshuka, saffron Benedict, halloumi and date toast, and a paratha breakfast wrap.
Lunch and dinner become heartier, with options such as a Pashtun fried chicken sandwich, slow-cooked lamb flatbread and chicken shawarma bowl.
The wood-fired oven gets a workout each night, with pizzas including spicy sujuk, salmon bianca and Levant chicken.
Although, one of the biggest points of difference is just how long you can stay.
Leah and her partner have both worked the kind of hours where lunch might not happen until 4pm or 5pm and dinner can fall well after 10pm. It inspired them to create somewhere locals could still find a proper meal when many other cafés and restaurants had closed for the afternoon or night.
Leah said she had already noticed people searching for coffee along O’Connell Street between 3pm and 5pm, when many nearby cafés had shut for the day.
As the sun goes down, Noya shifts into a late-night lounge vibe, with shisha available and a large rear outdoor deck centred around the wood-fired oven.
The couple have put just as much of themselves into the interiors. Leah said she and her partner renovated much of the venue themselves, choosing everything from the chairs to the velvet fabrics and drawing inspiration from the interiors they grew up around.
Gold and maroon accents run through the booths, while moody lamps sit over timber-topped tables, creating a space made for settling in and with the doors open until midnight, there’s really no need to leave after your coffee.
Noya Lounge
Where: 25 O’Connell Street, North Adelaide
When: 7 am – 12 am, Monday – Friday
For more information, click here.
