Manoushe Halloum (منقوشة حلوم) is the manoushe topped with halloumi, the firm brining-cheese that browns and squeaks rather than melting into a pull. The angle is the cheese's behavior under heat. Most cheese manoushe relies on a stretchy white cheese going molten and binding to the crumb; halloumi does the opposite, holding its shape and crisping at the edges while staying chewy in the center, so the build is about slicing and placement rather than melt. Get it right and you get golden, salty, slightly springy cheese set into a crisp base; get it wrong and you get either a rubbery cold slab on underbaked dough or a hard, oversalted, scorched layer.
The construction is simple and the choices are in the cut and the salt. Halloumi is sliced or grated, and because the cheese carries serious brine it is often soaked or rinsed first to pull some salt before it goes on. It is laid over hand-stretched manoushe dough, sometimes with a little olive oil or a scatter of za'atar, mint, or tomato to push back against the salt, then baked on a saj dome or in a hot oven. The timing is the whole game: long enough for the dough to cook through and the cheese to take color and firm up, short enough that the halloumi does not go hard and squeaky-tough or the edges burn. Good execution shows in the surface and the bite, a sheet of cheese bronzed in patches, still yielding rather than leathery, sitting on a base that is crisp underneath, with enough acid or herb to keep the salt honest. Sloppy execution uses cheese left full-salt so the round is punishing, slices it so thick it never sets against the bread, or bakes it cold-to-hot so the dough is doughy where the cheese protected it.
It shifts mostly by how the halloumi is cut and what is laid on with it. A grated version melts and crisps more evenly and reads closer to a standard cheese manoushe. A thick-sliced version keeps the squeak and chew front and center. Tomato, mint, olives, or a finish of za'atar after the bake push it toward a fuller sandwich and cut the salt further. The broad cheese manoushe made with akkawi or mixed melting cheeses is the closest relative and behaves differently enough, melting instead of browning, to stand as its own article rather than being folded in here. What manoushe halloum reliably delivers is the grill-cheese of the manoushe counter: firm, salty, gold-edged halloumi set on crisp dough, eaten hot and folded.