San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Booming success spurs lush new location
When the restaurant Mazra opened in 2020 inside a longtime Mediterranean market in San Bruno, the owners cooked kebabs on a humble, 4-foot grill, casually calling out orders to customers.
A year later, everything changed for the family-run business. Mazra was named No. 2 on Yelp’s list of the Top 100 Places to Eat in the country. Throngs of people lined up before the restaurant opened, waiting over an hour for juicy kebabs and crisp falafel wraps. The hype never really subsided, which forced brothers and owners Saif and Jordan Makableh to search for a new location so they could temporarily close and upgrade their father’s former grocery store.
The new Mazra opened April 2 at 2021 Broadway in downtown Redwood City — with a gleaming 22-foot grill, 130 seats and exciting new dishes. (Renovations have begun at the San Bruno original, which the owners hope to reopen late this year.)
All of Mazra’s Levantine hits are served here, from chicken and lamb kebabs to a whole head of crisp purple cauliflower doused in a lemony tahini sauce. Much of the menu is cooked over mesquite wood on the long, narrow grill, custom built by a grill “guru” in Texas. There is also garlicky rotisserie chicken, sixhour lamb shanks and oyster mushrooms coated in a saffron sauce and then charred on the grill.
Two spinning gyro machines churn out shawarma for wraps with hummus, tahini, pickles and tzatziki. Expect new creations to show up, like a Mediterranean ceviche with sea bass, prawns, cilantro oil, some kind of seasonal fruit (such as persimmons in the winter) and lavash chips. And soon, Mazra will start serving breakfast dishes like shakshuka and ful (a rich stew of fava beans and spices).
A bright orange La Marzocco espresso machine means new coffee drinks, with beans courtesy of San Francisco favorite Grand Coffee. The ashta cold brew, inspired by the Middle Eastern dessert of the same name, comes with a float of Straus heavy cream that slowly seeps into the coffee. Cardamom, cinnamon and orange syrups can be added to any coffee.
The Makableh brothers have transformed the cavernous, 5,000-square-foot space into a lush, bright destination. Sparkling emerald green tiles and marble adorn the ordering counter and coffee bar. Like the San Bruno original, the owners filled the dining room with faux plants, including three tall fake olive trees, and Turkish rugs. Glittering green glass chandeliers hang above, and sun filters in through a large skylight they built in what used to be a dark dining room.
A local artist covered one wall with an enormous mural of two hands holding a glass of tea and a bundle of fresh mint, a reference to the cultural importance of tea (always offered for free at Mazra, as if it were the Makablehs home).
There’s more seating in a spacious covered back patio, plus a parklet on Broadway. The street has been permanently closed to traffic since the pandemic, creating a lively outdoor dining scene.
Saif Maklabeh is anxious about how the new Mazra will be received. It’s hard to replicate the charm of a Hail Mary restaurant that was never supposed to be, born as a way to save the family’s struggling, 15-year-old Green Valley Market.
“I don’t want people to feel like we sold out,” he said. But it’s Mazra’s unexpected success that kept them open during the pandemic, enabled the expansion, and that will allow the original to reopen later this year with a new kitchen.
Mazra. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. daily. 2021 Broadway, Redwood City. eatmazra.com