It started with a slightly disappointing second-hand book and record sale in a church hall. I didn't need a copy of The Kon Tiki Expedition or a once-prized collection of old Jack Jones LPs. So I consoled myself with a milky coffee and a fig roll, and went off to explore an area of Sheffield I hadn't seen for five years or more. And that was how I discovered the Rowsha.

Lebanese restaurants aren't the first thing you expect in Walkley, a solid, stone-built, slate-roofed urban village a couple of hilly miles from the city centre.

It's a traditionally working class area, strong on community, with an Ebenezer Primitive Methodist Chapel and a pub called The Closed Shop: both loudly signalling non-conformity. The main road, South Road, was thriving 20 years ago: a bookshop, a photography gallery, the Noted Bacon Shop, a drapers. As Walkley's "demographic profile" went up, however (an influx of the boho-radical middle class – think Hebden Bridge invading Keighley), South Road
went down.

There's still plenty going on - a hair and beauty parlour called Curl Up and Dye, the Little Paws pet shop, a Netto, a Bargain Booze, the Perfect Pie café (all-day breakfasts) – but it's an unprepossessing backwater for a restaurant as smart and distinctive as
the Rowsha.

Stylishly fronted, it offers superb Lebanese food, cooked and often served by the engaging owner, Mohamed Hameed, a former professional
footballer who played for teams in Germany and Russia after a spell in Lebanon's under-19 national side. Now playing midfield in Loxley FC, a local team, he happily brings out an album of photographs of himself in his professional days.

He opened the Rowsha, named after a Lebanese outcrop of rocks, almost three years ago, and says he's usually extremely busy on Fridays and Saturdays ("mostly professional people"). We booked for a Wednesday, however, and were the only customers between 7.30 and 9.30. But what a pleasant evening
we had.

It's a small, narrowish place, with a wooden floor, deep pink walls and a dozen tables slotted cosily in. Lebanese music and iron lanterns lend an apt Arab touch, but the feel is cosmopolitan modern Lebanon rather than all-purpose-souk. A framed photograph of Beirut in the Thirties, with gleaming limos gliding past the palm trees, is a poignant reminder of the city's days as "the Paris of the East", a centre of glamour and culture... an image all but obliterated by more recent history.

When I visited Beirut eight or nine years ago, it was rebuilding on a grand scale, and one of the great memories (apart from the immense hospitality of the people) is of a lunch that spun its leisurely way through the afternoon. Waiters brought plate after small
plate of mezze, samples of dishes
offering a hundred ways with olives, a thousand ways with vine leaves, and yes, perhaps just a little top-up of wine, please…

Mezze is an easy option at the Rowsha, whose menu runs to 18 starters (around £4), five of them featuring in a set dinner for two, ambitiously priced at £46. At the other price extreme, there's an "early bird" menu on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays: two courses for £7.95.

We picked and chose. Grilled halloumi cheese with black-peppered olives (£4.20) came with khobz, a pitta-like Lebanese bread, which reappeared, cubed and fried like croutons, in a fatoush salad (£4.20) including tomato, onion and radish, given tang by lemon juice and charm by a sprig of mint on
the side. Olive oil is, needless to say, a staple ingredient.

Lamb dominates the six main meat dishes (£8 to £11), and there's chicken and a solitary fish dish – sayadieh (£13.50), a cod fillet spicily baked with tahina, lemon, coriander and garlic. "Served with a choice of rice or chips," said the menu. "Have rice," said the owner. From three vegetarian options, light vegetable kebabs (£9.95) were served with tangy tomato sauce, and we sampled a rather heavy aubergine moussaka, too strong on tomatoes.

The wine list includes just one Lebanese vintage, a red from the country's Bekaa Valley vineyards, where the Phoenicians launched wine production 6,000 years ago. On my visit eight years ago, its rutted roads won it the nickname "Backache Valley".

Though overpriced at a touch under £20 (house red is £10.95), the wine was sweet, full-bodied and – well, the menu has a nice way with words: "The ripe red fruits kind of creep up on you, but at the finish your chops are given a generous lash of strawberries and cream."

Our chops were also given a generous lash of kanafa (£3.90) – baked cream cheese and shredded pastry, with syrup and crushed pistachio. Plus potently strong Lebanese coffee. It was odd to
sit there, in a little pocket of the Middle East, and see a Methodist chapel across the road.

The fish and wine took the cost to just over £58, but cheaper options
could easily have knocked a tenner off that. Let's just say it's the sort of place that makes you want to go back and work your systematic way through the menu.

Before the meal, we'd had a drink at the no-nonsense Freedom House pub just up the road. In the beer garden at the back, hemmed in by houses, four men were talking fishing. "There's that many carp in that pond, you can't credit it," said one. "And he got a 22lb cod. He'd never seen one that big in his life."

He put down his pint of John Smiths and his arms spread out to embrace a Moby Dick among cod. The old urban village lives on. Almost, but not quite, The Full Walkley.

Rowsha Restaurant, 288 South Road, Walkley, Sheffield 6. 0114 233 1166 (www.rowsha.co.uk). Open Monday to Saturday, 6.30pm to 10.30pm.