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Jordan Makableh was 20 years old attending community college when his brother Saif came back from a stint working at eateries in Australia with an idea to convert their father’s grocery store into a restaurant.
“I was like, ‘Yo, he’s about this, I’m about this. Let’s do this,’” Jordan said.
A year after opening Mazra in San Bruno, the brothers’ restaurant earned second place on Yelp’s Top 100 Places to Eat, and Mazra made the nationwide list again this year, at No. 23. Now, the brothers are setting their sights on opening the second location of their Mediterranean restaurant in Redwood City April 2, an opening delayed since last summer due to a variety of regulatory agencies needing to grant approval of Mazra’s indoor charcoal grill.
The delay puts a whole new meaning on Mazra’s slogan: “Take it easy, Habibi – good food takes time.”
“We learned why they don’t do this out here,” Jordan said with a laugh in reference to the indoor charcoal grill.
The San Bruno location will temporarily close March 24 to undergo renovations, and the charcoal grill will be brought indoors to match Redwood City’s.
“As soon as Redwood City opens, the bulldozers are going, and they are literally tearing down a huge portion of the building,” Saif said. “I bite my tongue when I say this, but contractors are telling me six to eight months (to complete the work).”
Mazra opened March 26, 2020, in San Bruno, and the concept was inspired by Saif’s time working in restaurants in Australia.
“When I was in Australia, I saw a few of these fast-casual Middle Eastern concepts,” he said. “They give you these super high-quality ingredients and plates, but you’re picking it up like counter service. So it was a super casual environment, but without the casual food.”
In 2005, Saif and Jordan’s father opened Green Valley Market in San Bruno, a grocery store that sold halal meat, hot takeout dishes and Middle Eastern and Mediterranean groceries. But by 2012, business was not good, Saif said. His dad’s solution was to lease the entire building and step away from the business, but Saif wanted to revive the store and transform it into a fast-casual Middle Eastern concept. Saif would develop the recipes and his brother would handle the business side.
“My dad was all for it,” Saif said. “He put a lot of trust in us.”
Saif began finding ways to update his parents’ recipes from Green Valley Market, making small changes like using Persian cucumbers instead of English, using labneh instead of yogurt and sourcing ingredients locally, which made a huge difference in taste and quality.
“One thing I remember (about Green Valley Market) that would always irk me was these three-compartment takeout boxes where you put rice and your meat, but you also have your cold salad in there and hummus,” he said. “It would steam up the hummus and the salad, and I remember just saying, ‘I could create a way better version of serving this food.’ The taste was there, but so many things were missing.”
Mazra translates to “farm” in Arabic, and the brothers aim to use locally grown produce at Mazra. The garlic is from Gilroy, the artichokes are from Calistoga, the lettuce is from Salinas and the tomatoes are from Bolinas, Saif said. Learning how to properly store produce also made a big difference; for example, the brothers learned on TikTok that tomatoes should be stored at room temperature.
“It tastes so much better,” Saif said.
The changes paid off – the brothers took a failing business and turned it into an eatery that has since made Yelp’s Top 100 Places to Eat twice in four years. While Mazra is known for its cooked-to-order wood-fired meats, Yelp cites the restaurant’s variety of vegetarian options as a reason for its high ranking. Mazra’s street wraps, whole cauliflower, falafel mezze samplers and halloumi cheese rolls are just some of its vegetarian offerings.
“We never wanted to create vegan or vegetarian dishes like imitated meat,” Saif said. “We thought that vegetables taste so good on their own there’s no reason to turn them into something else.”
In addition to being inclusive for vegetarian eaters, Saif said much of Mazra’s menu is gluten-free as well.
“You could literally come in, have six different allergies, and I promise you we still will have multiple items on our menu that are gonna go ahead and satisfy you,” Jordan said.
“The only thing that people cannot come to our restaurant is if they have a garlic allergy,” Saif added. “Everything has garlic.”
While the new location will have a near identical menu to San Bruno’s – they’ll continue offering complimentary tea service and allowing guests to bring their own alcohol – there will be some new additions, including a cafe bar. The brothers are introducing new nonalcoholic beverages like Turkish coffee and Lebanese mocktails, including fruit-based cocktails with ashta cream.
“When we would go to the Middle East, the street vendors would offer these really cool Lebanese mocktails – and they’re basically fruit shakes with fruit in it, with ashta, with pistachios and honey – and it’s just such a nostalgic thing,” Saif said. “When you’re eating shawarma, it’s almost standard for you to have these shakes with it.”
The Redwood City location will be “as light-filled as possible,” said Saif, adding that they took out half the roof to create a glass ceiling.
“We wanted to bring so much natural light so we can grow our plants in there and continue to offer that openness that San Bruno offers,” he said.
Mazra, 2021 Broadway, Redwood City, Instagram: @eatmazra.
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